The Vamp in the Silver Mask

The Vamp in the Silver Mask Title page

Praise for WYNN WAGNER’s Vamp Camp “What surprised me the most about this book was the element of sarcastic humor that Mårten has. There were several laugh out loud moments for me and seeing everything through his eyes was definitely entertaining to say the least.” —Night Owl Reviews Top Pick “Sick of the same old tired, über-powerful vamps but can’t quite let go of those sexy suckers? Definitely give Vamp Camp a try then. This hilarious, witty, sly, entertaining, sexy, and flat-out laugh-out-loud funny romp hits so many high points…” —Three Dollar Bill Reviews “Goodbye, vampires in New Orleans, Colonial era. Hello, vampires in Germany, World War One era. Author Wynn Wagner tackles a subject that many authors have tackled, notably Anne Rice, and he has found new and colorful and erotic ways to write about it. Best of all, he does it with the deliciously dry wit that infuses everything he writes.” —Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner Copyright Copyright Published by Dreamspinner Press 4760 Preston Road Suite 244-149 Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living

or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The Vamp in the Silver Mask Copyright © 2011 by Wynn Wagner Cover Art by Reese Dante http://www.reesedante.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ ISBN: 978-1-61581-700-9 Printed in the United States of America First Edition April 2011 eBook edition available eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-701-6 Dedication Dedication

For Dr. Burlo, who always demanded that we never let the facts get in the way of the story. For the writing professors at TCU for making sure we all could spot the difference between a protagonist and a bucket of Shinola. For Ally Blue, Anne Rice, and Mariah Prosper for really different reasons but nothing short of admiration for your work.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 DESTINY and fate, the universal forces that drove me to the moment at hand. They are twin conduits, almost identical until you see them beside each other and they join as an unstoppable power. They provide the universe with its momentum. My name is Mårten Larsson, vampire. Destiny and fate: the rest of the world became a blur as I concentrated on the image at the business end of my sniper rifle’s telephoto sight. My entire life had led me to this moment. This was the reason I was born—destiny—but the situation was not something I had chosen. The events selected me—fate. I pointed my sniper rifle toward the side of a small hill in the desert of Arizona near Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States. A local vampire, acting as the official guide for this killing, had told me the rogue vamp would be returning to the hill before daylight. I only kill vampires who have lost their minds and are killing humans. I only kill those who have committed some capital offense under vampire law. I only execute those who have been able to evade the justice of the local vamps. You have to create an awful situation to rate my attention. The locals really want you dead or they wouldn’t pay my fee. My name is Mårten Larsson, vampire and vampire killer. My training has been flawless, and my aim is always deadly. My training and skills were focused on that desert in a rising torrent of ugly-ass vampire justice in the form of silver shrapnel. One rogue vampire was about to go ka-boom, and my bank account was about to go ka-chink. Movement. I saw it through my telephoto sight. It happened so far off in the distance that you would have seen nothing without lenses. It was dark, with only a little moonlight. No, I can’t use night-vision equipment, because vampires have no heat signature. Movement. My sight is always adjusted based on the trajectory information that Oberon gives me. He and I are a team on this mission. He is my spotter, my light, my life, my husband. We have been a couple for more than a hundred years, and I look forward to spending another thousand years with him. Movement. Front-to-back, and that is always a simpler shot. If the target is moving left-toright, I have to calculate where he or she will be five or six seconds after I squeeze the trigger. Relax… double-check aim… predict… squeeze… squeeze… ah-choooooo! Skit. Skit. Skit. Sometimes Swedish works better, especially when I don’t care if anybody’s around to understand the words. My name is Mårten Larsson, vampire, vampire killer—with the most embarrassing friggin’ allergies in the whole history of the planet. Oberon and I are members of the Obscurati. That’s my pretend name for our group, which is so secretive that just knowing the real name could

get you and me killed. I mean, I could get over you being killed. No offense. But I’m sort of attached to me. The Obscurati are the “unseen death” that is feared by rogue vampires everywhere. I could feel my Viking blood starting to boil. It can sometimes get the best of me, so I try to relax and to concentrate. “I’m not sure how to tell you to adjust your sight,” Oberon said using sign language. “I think you put that round somewhere in New Mexico.” “Fuck you,” I signaled using the kind of sign language the whole world knows. No codes: some sign language is universal. My sniper rifle is instantly ready to fire again because it has a magazine of ammunition. Some snipers use a bolt-action weapon, but I stick to semi-automatics because I often have to lay down several shots. The first shot was so far off-target that the doomed vampire didn’t know about it. Relax… double-check aim… predict… squeeze… pop! Wait for it… wait for it… poof of sand. Sand. Great. The vampire jogged a little to his left, and I had no way to adjust the bullet in the air. The wind could have helped a little, but it decided to gust the wrong way. Skit. I mean, friggin’ skit. My freakin’ destiny tripped over my goddamn fate. “Adjust three dots right,” Oberon signed; he could see the trace that my second shot made through the air. It didn’t leave a streak of light. Oberon can follow the bullet by watching the air it disturbs on its way to the target. I know the weapon and the sight, and the sight matches the rifle exactly. I need the adjustment, not the rifle. The target changed direction, and a wind gust pushed the bullet the wrong way. Maybe I could send out for a bag of steadier wind. And don’t go all smug on me. You try to make this shot. The rogue vamp was heading to his lair, a hole on the side of a hill overlooking Lake Mead. There was no place to establish a sniper’s nest on the bank. I couldn’t go for a high-angle shot by levitating because this vamp was also able to fly and would have detected an extra vampire in the air. Directly across the lake was Scanlon Bay, which would have made the shot several kilometers beyond my range. I can make amazing shots using Oberon’s homemade bullets, but I have to be no more than two thousand meters from the target or else I miss. My rifle supposedly can make a longer shot if you fire it up like an artillery cannon, but I don’t even understand that kind of shooting. I have learned to cope with my own limitations, but don’t go spreading the word or I won’t be paid as much money for missions. One nearby shore put me close enough. It was at my upper personal range, but I could do it. I think I can. I think I can.

The locals had offered to get us on a boat in the lake, but I had told them it wouldn’t be necessary. Waves in a boat: yeah, that will help me. Now I was in danger of losing the target for the day, and that would be bad news for the Obscurati. The sniper was out being cocky about his tough-guy reputation. The target saw the second round but wasn’t sure what to do. He knew he was safe on the side of his hill. Nobody could cause him any trouble because he had picked his lair as a defensive stronghold. We were too far for him to sense our presence using vamp-dar. We were no bigger than little specks on the horizon, so there was no chance he could see us. It was hot, but vampires don’t sweat, so he couldn’t smell us. Our cover remained solid. Our stealth was intact. Only my reputation was in jeopardy. Skit. Skit. I can make this shot. I’ve done it hundreds of times on our target range in Germany and in the field. Oberon has computers and electronic targeting thingies. Yeah, I have a super telephoto telescopic gonzo laser sight on top of my rifle. I have my lover at my side with all his targeting computer and weather gizmo thingies. But the bullet is in the air for more than six seconds. You try to predict where the tiny spot in your sniper rifle sight will be six seconds from now. Do it in the middle of the night without much moonlight and without any infrared night-vision equipment because vampires have no heat-signature. Oberon and I get called in to finish off a vampire when the locals have run out of things to try. Oberon tells me how to adjust my sight and how to fudge the shot to account for wind direction and the friggin’ curvature of the goddamn earth. That was how far away we were from the victim. I was in a completely different state from the target, for crying out loud. Years ago, I used a PSG sniper rifle. It was state-of-the-art then. I could drop a vampire at 800 meters, and that distance made me a very rich vampire. When somebody needs a sniper, they contact the vampire queen of Europe. Oberon and I live in Bavaria, in southern Germany, but we have a house in New York City and a whole island in the South Pacific. We even own a big jet with vampire shielding on a big bedroom, so we can fly even when it is daylight. It’s an empire. Fortunately, we have Lonny to run the family business. Lonny is a vampire and my husband and the love of my life. Yeah, I already said the same thing about Oberon. Lonny and Oberon are both my lovers. It’s complicated. I was zero hits for two shots, and I was moving from embarrassed to really angry. My efforts to stay calm weren’t working. Don’t let my Viking blood boil. Calm. Focus. My sniper rifle. I miss my PSG, the hardware that made me a very rich vampire. If I had still been using it, we couldn’t have taken the job at the Nevada-Arizona border, because that

was far outside the range of a PSG. My new popgun is a Barrett M82A1. It uses monstrous .50-caliber BMG ammunition, and caliber was why I held off changing. Oberon has machinery to custom-make ammunition. Changing my ammunition meant Oberon had to retool everything in his workshop. Regular bullets can’t kill a vampire. “Excuse me,” you might say to the clerk of a gun store, “I’d like a box of your best vampire-killing silver ammo.” Yeah, right. Oberon makes armor-piercing bullets out of depleted uranium. He has a supply of incendiary ammunition to let me set buildings on fire at a sniper range. My favorite is his copper-clad, hollow-point silver bullet. It just explodes inside the vampire. You can only kill a vampire by blowing off his head or setting him on fire. Silver disables a vampire. So if you have a bullet that explodes with silver inside the vampire, there’s not much left for the locals to clean up. Oberon makes all the munitions at his workshop in southern Germany, and we had a deadly assortment of his handiwork in the western part of the United States. Yes, the American authorities would have all kinds of issues with us bringing depleted uranium and exploding silver into the States. I don’t plan on telling them. If they suddenly know, I will know you opened your mouth. Many snipers prefer a bolt-action weapon, but I like the semiautomatic because I need to lay down whole sheets of bullets. A bolt-action is good for single shots, and it would make me concentrate on that one shot. It doesn’t match my real-world situation. The older PSG uses standard NATO rounds, and Oberon had been making that size for years. He had to retool all of his equipment. It was Oberon and Lonny who finally convinced me to try the Barrett M82A1. It has an effective range of two thousand meters (about 1.2 miles). I mean, holy shit. Can you even imagine that kind of shot? Just reading the specifications made me pee all over myself. Almost. The manufacturer says you can shoot much further than that, but I don’t see how. I can’t. You can’t tell me that anybody can. I think the manufacturer is a bit optimistic in their literature, but it adds so much more range compared to my previous sniper rifles. The Barrett doesn’t even look like a rifle. It is more like a long rod with a trigger on the bottom and a handle on top. They don’t bother making something that looks like a regular stock. It has a thing to go against the shoulder, but it doesn’t look like it should. It has a kind of shock absorber that cuts down the kick. I don’t think anything short of a battleship could survive .50-caliber recoils without the extra onboard baffles. The rifle still has a kick because of Oberon’s special ammo, but it is manageable.

There is a lever to pull to load a cartridge, and I knew I had a serious rifle the first time I tried to pull the lever. It takes lots more oomph than my previous weapons. I’m stronger than the strongest human, but I have to admit that I noticed the difference. I had to practice pulling the lever so I didn’t get into the field and embarrass myself: “Honey, could you come pull my lever?” A .50-caliber cartridge going into the chamber makes an unmistakable sound. You never have to ask if the rifle is loaded because you just know. Releasing the lever produces a clank that sounds serious. You might as well be putting a projectile into one of those big guns on a battleship. My ears rang for an hour after I first fired the Barrett. It takes powder to move a shell that is thirteen millimeters (a half inch) in diameter. Powder is loud. I had to get some noise-filter headphones quickly. It isn’t that I’m a sissy, but vampires have ultra-sensitive hearing. I had to practice for months before I was worth a hoot beyond a couple of hundred meters. Even today some shots are just difficult. I have to know about the various wind directions and speeds between me and the target. Gravity is a factor at the upper end of my effective range. On a shorter shot, gravity doesn’t get enough time to pull the bullet. Listen to me: shorter shots. The PSG has a huge range, but it isn’t in the same league as the Barrett. And to make things even more interesting for me, vampires usually don’t stay still. At over two thousand meters, the bullet is in the air for five or six seconds. I have to predict where the target will be six seconds from when I squeeze the trigger. It is easier when the vampire is walking directly toward me or away from me. When he is moving left to right, that is a ridiculous calculation. If the vampire changes tempo, it becomes an impossible shot. The job is always a SWAG—not merely a wild-ass guess but a scientific wild-ass guess. Oberon invented a dot system for me to calculate movement. My sight has little dots in addition to the standard crosshair. Oberon has a telescope that has the same dots, so he can help me adjust the sight. I count how far the target moves across the sight in one second. Then I count the dots to the left or right or up and down for every second the bullet will be airborne. There’s a reason we charge the local vampires so much money. I was a math major in college, but that was back before World War One. I was really good at using a slide rule, but that kind of calculation is slow enough to let a vampire be on a different continent before I know how to aim. Fortunately, my husband, Oberon, is really good using computers. He picked up his latest, a tablet PC, at a store in South Africa. It is a Sahara and has a touch screen without a physical keyboard, and it has custom software that he uses to come up with the adjustments on my sight. His electronic gadgets all plug into the PC and talk directly to his software without requiring any typing or other input. When he has to type something, the

Sahara draws a picture of a keyboard on the screen, and Oberon touches the virtual keys. There was a time when he used an iPad, but he got pissed at Apple one too many times. The iPad was always about limitations. He said it was almost impossible to get software to talk to his equipment, so he finally flew out over the Atlantic Ocean and flung it as high and as hard as he could. Hopefully his iPad didn’t hit the space station, the Hubble telescope, or any of the military’s secret telescopes or communications satellites on its journey into space. I’m sure it had escape velocity. “I thought your iPad was the latest thing,” I said. “Yeah, if you want to look cool. The minute you try to do something useful, you find that it can’t do it. Ugggh. You can’t even run Flash. Every goddamn computer on the planet can run Flash, but not if you have an Apple. No Flash… I want about thirty minutes alone with the asswipe who thought that was a good idea.” “Intergalactic Vampire Frisbee?” I asked when he returned from his trip to the ocean. “There’s an ‘app’ for that,” Oberon said as he tossed every widget and accessory from Apple into a garbage bag. He was through with that company, and nothing Apple could do would ever change that. He even threw out his music player. He wasn’t even worried that he might break the stuff when he threw it. I think he tried to break everything. “Hand-held phone,” he said as he dug his telephone out of a pocket. “It only works if you put it on a table. Pick up the phone with your hand, and it loses its signal.” Crack went the phone when it crashed into the pile of other Apple hardware in the bag. Oberon sent the iPad into outer space, but he kept the rest of the junk. He said he was finally ready to try out the Barrett for himself. I had been after him to try the new rifle, but I guess he was waiting to have a target that he really wanted to annihilate. Note to self: do not piss off the Goth vamp. Our new field equipment uses either Linux or Windows. He goes back and forth, but I think he currently has Windows loaded. The Sahara can handle both Linux and Windows, so Oberon is free to experiment. His weather goodies can talk directly to his computer without any wires, which is way beyond anything that the Apple stuff could do. It seems like a simple thing to get hardware talking to each other, but I guess I don’t understand enough about it. For the first time, I have to take maintenance of the rifle seriously. I can’t just pull the rifle out of my bag and start firing. Aiming is so critical that I have to be a good little Boy Scout and run a cleaning rod inside the barrel. The tiniest bit of moisture inside could move a bullet by several feet downrange. They ship the thing in a waterproof container, and I think that I’m supposed to cart around this container. It isn’t going to happen, but I do know that I have to keep it clean and dry before I set up for a shot.

But I digress. Back to the job at hand, and this one was beginning to annoy me. “You aren’t cold bore now,” Oberon signaled. “Bite me,” I signaled back. He was trying to remind me that the rifle would behave a little differently because it was warmed by my friggin’ wild shots. Oberon shrugged. “No, bite me,” I signaled again, “and then go fuck yourself.” I used all those international signals that work in most languages. I followed it with the kind of cold stare that told him I wasn’t in the mood for antics. “I’m just sayin’,” he whispered. So the vampire in Arizona thought he was being very clever. He was! Not clever enough, of course, but he made me earn my pay. This guy was murdering humans all over the place. He was getting noticed by the local law enforcement people, and that is a very bad thing for vampires to do. The locals want all the vampires in their territory to stay invisible to humans. There are plenty of voluntary blood donors, but some vampires just go crazy. They break and start terrorizing the natives. Maybe they were turned too young, or something snaps as they get older. Teenagers only make good vampires in Hollywood movies. When somebody gets turned before their human brain has settled down enough to handle the extra stress, it never results in a good turning. The kid rampages through the human population, responding to an intense hunger for blood. The rest of us can’t do anything to teach the child vamp, so we have to kill him. The vamp’s Maker usually gets killed too. Every vampire knows not to turn a child, so there’s no mercy for those who break this rule. It is a kind of child abuse. On the other end is a really old vampire who has been following the rules for hundreds or thousands of years. Nobody knows what causes some to snap in their old age, but there is almost always some kind of trauma, like the loss of a long-term mate or friend. Sometimes the vampire’s mind just gets addled, like a supernatural form of Alzheimer’s. These are tough jobs because old vampires are always powerful. They have hundreds of years of survival training, and they can taste danger long before they see it. This vamp was just mean. He wasn’t particularly old in vampire time, maybe a hundred years or so. The guide told us that he had always been peculiar and brutal, but the locals had been able to keep him controlled. Six months ago he got tired of living with rules and moved out to the desert. The locals had lost several vampires in their battle with this guy. He would kill any vampire or human who got close. He spent each day buried in the side of a hill in the deserts of Arizona. The locals even sent out humans during the day to try uncovering him. The rogue vampire killed the humans

even in the daylight. He must have been burned by the radiation of the sun, but he could still hold off attacks. There weren’t any trees to block his view. His hill overlooked Lake Mead, and he had a commanding view of everything. Across the lake was Scanlon Bay in the state of Nevada, and that was where we started. The locals had gotten us a boat to move closer to the vampire, but I figured I could make the shot. Lake Mead was a little narrower at one place. It was an impossible shot: from Nevada, across the lake, into Arizona. Huge distance. To go across Scanlon Bay would have totaled more than six kilometers, well outside my ability. In theory the rifle could make the shot, but I would have to fire it up in the air like a mortar. I don’t understand how to calculate those angles. To kill a vampire six kilometers away, I have to know where he will be in seven-plus seconds, and I have to aim the rifle at Mars or Jupiter. Maybe someday, but just thinking about what I’d have to do makes my brain hurt. The vampire in Arizona thought he was safe. When he got close to his lair, he slowed down. It was like a nice, nighttime stroll in the moonlight. He was walking from the lake up to his hole, and there was only the slightest movement right-to-left. It was enough to make me miss on my first shot. I’m sure he saw the bullet hit the sand of the desert. It just didn’t register that somebody could be putting a bullet so close to him in that particular location. Jeez, you’d have to be… what? Across Lake Mead? Impossible. In fact, the vampire turned and sat down on the side of his hill to watch the night sky. I suddenly had all the time I needed, and there was nothing moving. I didn’t have to use calculus or algebra or anything. It was about twenty seconds between shots. I had to wait to see where the first one landed, and then I had to recalculate my ticks to the right. I could count a tick for a second, but the winds were messing up my trajectory. It was more like a third of a tick per second. There are usually landmarks between me and the target that tell me what the wind is doing, but I only had desert and a lake for this one. Neither gave me a hint of any breeze. I knew it was present because I saw what the bullet did. How do I predict this one? If I had been an English major instead of a math major, I’d be useless. Maybe I should leave the Barrett and launch an attack with one of the assault rifles we carry. That’s more fun than a sniper rifle. I like to mix things up. The sniper rifle is like a science project. It keeps me out of the fight. The only thing we use is my brain and finger—Oberon’s brain too—but we are far removed from the action. One more round toward this guy, and I am going into assault mode.

Look… slide the safety knob to vertical… aim… confirm the target… predict the wind… tick, tick to the left for the breeze… squeeze… pop! Wait… wait… wait… six seconds and nothing. No, seven seconds and there’s a sizzle way across the lake. My third shot hit him in the neck. I could tell that there was an explosion inside the vampire, but it was too far away to hear. Maybe my ears were ringing from being so close to the rifle. I do need to get some of those soundproof headphones. Is there a sniper supply store? There must be. Oberon reads all the trade magazines, so he’d know. The exploding bullet blew the vamp’s head into a million pieces, thanks to the shards of silver shrapnel. The locals would do any cleanup of the dead vampire, but my new weapon never left much that needed to be cleaned. When a vampire dies from an exploding bullet, the only thing left is a little pile of ashes. I have a stash of handy-wipes in my bag, and I like to wipe my face and hands after a kill. This time I found that my nose was leaking. I sneeze blood. A vampire with hay fever is really embarrassing. Yeah, I’m a big tough assassin with blood trickling out of my nose. Oberon and I both wear masks that Lonny made for us. They add to our mystery, but this time mine was streaked and splattered with vampire sneezeage (read: blood). I was going to have to do some serious cleaning back in New York. Oh, come off it. You try lying down in the state of Nevada and taking aim across an entire lake to take out a skittish vamp in the state of Arizona. Okay, smarty-pants. Try it with hay fever. “Three shots?” Oberon said. “Bite me,” I fired back using the soundless communication of mind-words. Before the shot, we can’t use mind-words because the target would be able to hear us. We have to maintain “radio silence.” After the shot, Oberon is free to try and make me feel even worse than I already do. “Love to bite you, darling,” Oberon laughed in my head, “but we probably ought to head back to New York. Don’t let that blood on your mask dry.” I shot him a look as I pulled the safety lever on the Barrett back to its horizontal position. Oberon would gather his gear and get our payment. As soon as I saw the vampire’s head explode, I shot up into the air. I was halfway to my cruising altitude when I remembered something. I had to turn around to pick up my spent shell casings. They all got dumped into a duffel bag. I’d clean the rifle later. Right now I just wanted to be away from Arizona and Nevada and Lake Mead and that awful desert. Fuck the gig and the desert.

“Forget something?” Oberon said to me using hand signals. We were learning sign language to keep all our communication between just the two of us. I held up a shell casing. He nodded. Nobody needed to have these casings with my fingerprints and Oberon’s fingerprints or the marks made by the Barrett. We try not to leave fingerprints or DNA, but I am not going to clean up whatever I expelled during that first sneeze. If any crime scene guys think they can find it, they may have my DNA. Happy Yule. Oberon took his time gathering his gear and getting our payment from the local guide. We never say anything to the guide. We just take direction and do the shot, and then Oberon gets the money. Oberon never has to rush because he is lightning-fast in the air. The local guide may also be Obscurati or just a representative of the local vampire royal or master. We don’t ask. The guide usually doesn’t tell. Sometimes we get a chatty guide, but Oberon tells him (or her) to stay quiet. “Do you want to go catch a show while we are so close to Las Vegas?” Oberon said when he caught up to me in the air. “You know it always helps you calm down.” The last time we went to a Las Vegas show, an usher decided I would be her special project for the evening. She had hair spiked in a great fan or Mohawk on steroids, and she picked on me loudly until the show began. Her hair was a rainbow of colors that don’t exist in nature, unless her mother had an affair with a metallic peacock. The mutant usher made me part of the ambiance of the show. Picking on me was all part of her act. We had great tickets and sat close to the stage. Unfortunately, this show used lots of fire, and our good seats put me close to the pyrotechnics. Vampires sizzle and burn easily. Oberon had a lovely time, of course. To review: I was picked on by the creepy usher with weird, gravity-defying spikes of wildly colored hair and almost fried by stray embers. Yeah, that always keeps me calm. Sign me up. I headed back to our building in New York. I can blast along at about ten times the speed of sound. Wicked fast, but Oberon is always faster. “Okay, you’re just trying to run up the scoreboard,” I told Oberon using mind-words as he whooshed past me. I don’t even know how to calculate how fast Oberon can move, but he is one of the fastest vampires I’ve ever seen. Oberon has blue eyes and long black hair that becomes a kind of tail or tracer as he flashes across the sky. The duffel bag full of his equipment stays flat on his back, straining against the rushing wind. Its straps are pulled taut by the force of his speed. Oberon had an aerodynamic bag made just for his flights through the air, because any ordinary bag would disintegrate in the wind and pressure, which would be a bad thing when you are hauling ammunition and computers.

The mask that Lonny made for Oberon fits so perfectly that the wind never knocks it off. Oberon dresses like a Goth person: guy-liner, black clothes, and sulking lips with faint traces of lipstick. He is the most over-sexed person I’ve ever known. Oberon is vaguely effeminate but all top in bed. No oral sex for him. He likes to fuck, and he can do it four or five times a day without any trouble. Our record is about eight times, just the two of us. We have an open relationship, and that really helps keep my ass from feeling like worn-out hamburger meat. We’ve been a couple for more than a hundred years, and I’ve loved every day of it. He would probably be back in our New York building and in bed with a blood-donor before I crossed over the Mississippi river. We don’t kill humans. Vampires have been completely civilized since the 1500s. If you read about vampires being monsters, remember you are reading fiction. Those other authors know about as much about vampires as I know about making cheddar cheese, which is not very much. We keep a staff of human blood donors. They are mostly gay men. In return for their blood, we pay for their college educations. After a blood donor graduates, we do a vampire mind-trick to make them forget about the very existence of vampires. They agree to all this up front or they don’t become a blood donor. We get blood, and they get education. They can have all the sex with Oberon they want. When a vampire takes blood, it is a really sensual or sexual experience for the human. There is something in our saliva or bite that creates the most amazing experience for the human. A few of our blood donors are heterosexual, and that’s okay. I don’t understand it. Maybe they are just born that way. They just give blood and get educated, and nobody forces them to have sex. We don’t even force any human to be a blood donor on any particular day. If the human is sick or not in the mood, we go to another donor. A computer program makes sure that we rotate through all the blood donors, never taking blood from anyone more than once or twice a week. The Obscurati—the “unseen death”—had another notch on the scorecard. One evil vampire was put out of business, and all the locals in the Lake Mead and Las Vegas area were happy not to have to worry about unwanted notoriety. Humans were safer, and we were exorbitantly richer. This job paid €50,000 (about $65,000), and the Las Vegas vampires were happy to pay it. There was no other vampire in the world who could have taken this guy down. The bad vampire would have sensed their presence in plenty of time to escape. He couldn’t sense our presence all the way across Lake Mead, and that was his downfall. When I was over the Appalachian Mountains, I felt an updraft and slowed to take in the scenery, doing a few high-altitude somersaults. Sometimes my life seems funny. I grabbed my duffel bag and started dancing with it, singing, “If my friends could see me… if my friends

could see me… if my friends could see me now.” “Hey, can I help you?” came a voice over my left shoulder. Crap. Vampire security. There must be something going on down below. When vampires need security, they get muscle to levitate. They create a kind of bubble of blood-thugs. Crap. Crap. I didn’t even look around but flashed out to the east as fast as I could. “Maybe you didn’t hear me, motherfucker,” hollered the vampire. I just looked east and didn’t acknowledge his presence. No interaction should mean that I was just passing through. I was a vampire wearing a mask and carrying an oversized duffel bag. I made contingency plans to unzip my bag and pull out my pistol. Maybe I ought to just wear the pistol during the cross-country flights. No, that was crazy; this was the first time a vamp had been up at my altitude to question my passage. “Hey, I’m talking to you, shithead,” he called out as he stopped somewhere over Pennsylvania. The vamp had anger issues and was on that invisible line where all my buttons live. Hopefully he won’t push any of those buttons, because I don’t want to have to clean up the mess that I know I can cause. I stayed my course through all the hostile words. He grabbed my arm to spin me around, and that was when he noticed that I was wearing a mask streaked by blood. He recognized the mask. I didn’t know my mask was famous, but he definitely knew that the mask meant I was not a vampire to be messed with. He might have assumed that all the blood spatter was from a fight. I wasn’t going to tell him it was from a sneeze. The mask meant that I was a tough guy or that I was out on a drunken Halloween junket. I made sure my face didn’t show him any change: no smile, no frown, nothing. I could dash down to the ground and stash the bag if I had to. It might even be fun to mix things up with a local vampire. I shoot rogue vampires, but I don’t enjoy it. What I really like to do is fight—alley-style with no weapons—and I was willing to do that if he insisted. I was on business, so I tried not to get involved in anything else. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. He backed off, and I heard him tell some other vampire that it was the Obscurati, only he used the real name. I didn’t stop to warn him not to do that. He was on his own if there were other Obscurati in the area. I did what any vampire should expect from any member of our group: no interaction at all. We are the “unseen” enforcers of vampire law, and we don’t get chummy when we are out on a job. It is all business. Crap. You never see other vampires over Europe. The United States has crowded airspace. Supposedly the air over China can be a complete clusterfuck sometimes, but I’m not an expert on anything Chinese. They take care of their own.

“EVERYTHING okay?” Oberon asked as I walked into the main room of our New York building. “Yeah, fine,” I lied. I didn’t want to have to explain about getting caught singing part of a Broadway musical over Kentucky. That sort of admission would seriously compromise my tough-guy Viking image. “Lonny sends his love,” Oberon said, giving me a pass on whatever he detected. “He says he misses us both and is really lonely.” Lonny was in Bavaria at our main house. He runs all our facilities and has a big remodeling project going on in Germany. The house hadn’t gotten any structural attention in several centuries. Lonny wanted to add gamma-ray shielding to most of the exterior walls. Gamma radiation is put out by the sun, and it will fry a vampire on the spot. That is why we never come out in the daylight. When the sun comes up, I die. It isn’t the light but the gamma rays that put me down. My vampire body goes into a kind of hibernation as the gamma rays rise during the day. The earth is the best shield, so we are all awake at night. Aluminum is a great shield too. Anything with solid mass works, and aluminum is lighter-weight than other metals. The shielding on our big jet—an Airbus A330—is aluminum that is twelve millimeters thick (about a half inch). Lonny’s house remodeling will put thirty millimeters (an inch or so) of lead and aluminum sheets on all of the exterior walls and the roof. Lonny likes lead because he can get mass with a thinner sheet of metal. He demolished all of the outside walls and rebuilt them using concrete, earth, and clay. He takes his shielding seriously. Once a new wall is up, he sets up equipment to test and record the gamma rays for several days. Lonny has gone through several designs, and he says the walls keep getting better and better as he learns more about materials. He is moving some walls to make our sleeping areas larger. Lonny, Oberon, and I will have individual bedrooms, even though we all spend daylight hours in a larger community bedroom. Lechmont Manor will also have plenty of new guest rooms, and each will be fully shielded and lockable from the inside. There is a conference room or sitting room in the bedroom wing, and that is where he is installing the best shielding. The steel doors of the conference room are bigger and thicker than the bedrooms’. These gonzo doors can be latched and secured and bolted closed from the inside. He used some kind of new paint made with nano-something. Electronic devices like cell phones don’t even work in the room. He thinks that vampires can be awake and functioning during the daylight hours in the conference room. Anybody who asks can get an earful about the conference room. Lonny says it is state-of-the-art vampire.

We call our home Lechmont Manor. It is a mansion far out in the country, outside of München (Munich). In addition to the main house (read: castle), we have storage and guest buildings. There is even a church that my former mentor and friend built for the locals. It is an Old Catholic Church. The priest says Mass at night, and vampires from all over Europe pop over to attend. While other churches are closing their doors, our little church is growing. Old Catholic vampires: who knew? Lechmont Manor is also a farm. Its main crop is hops, but it also has hundreds of solar panels that generate electricity from sunlight. We’ve always grown hops, but now we grow electricity. “What do you grow?” you could ask. “Beer and electrons,” I would say proudly. “Electrons grow wild in our part of Germany.” “Herrejävlar,” you’d say if you knew Swedish. “Ja,” I’d say. “Holy shit indeed.”

THE house didn’t need improvements on such a big scale, but it makes Lonny happy. Vampire time makes you think about houses and property differently. We blow through a century like humans go through a year. If we don’t keep our houses done right, they fall apart quickly. Lonny is doing work that we won’t have to revisit for several centuries. By the year 2300 or so, it may need another upgrade. I missed Lonny as much as Oberon did. I love two men, and they love me. It makes me just about the luckiest vampire in the world. Oberon turned Lonny just a few years ago. The turning was my idea, but Oberon did the turning because there is a bond between a vampire and his Maker. Oberon knew that we would end up in a ménage à trois with Lonny, so he made sure he cemented his rightful place. Vampires can be a little territorial. Three of us in a relationship is way outside the norm. I know, I know, but it is even further outside the norm for territorial vampires. Maybe that wannabe thug-vamp over Kentucky was just being territorial. I was the one who fell in love with Lonny and his stunning bubble-butt. He has a fuzzy chest, which isn’t usually what I like. And I am usually a bottom, so it is strange for me to like to play with his ass-cheeks so much. I can sit in bed for hours, just stroking his bottom and playing with his crack. Cuddling, not sex. Oberon will screw almost any human or vampire so long as he’s male. He has mellowed in the past few years, but he still wants more sex than me. Lonny and I usually have sex only with Oberon or each other. We keep it in the ménage, but that is by choice. We are free to

have sex with anybody we want. We just tend not to want. Oberon and Lonny are quite enough for me. I really missed Lonny’s ass. Bubble-butt, but not dispro-portionally huge. He has the cutest dimples on the side of each butt-cheek. What I’d give to let my mouth dig into his crack or cuddle against a dimple. I missed Lonny’s touch, stroking the back of his hand. That doesn’t mean I don’t love Oberon or love having sex with him. If I were away with Lonny, I would be missing Oberon. It’s complicated.

LONNY kept us informed about the house and his other activities. In addition to the renovations, he was working out finishing details on a kind of airline or charter service for vampires. He is sensitive to this because he can’t fly like his two husbands. Back when I was first turned, the way for a vampire to travel was by ocean liner. It was slow, but an inner cabin gave plenty of insulation from the deadly gamma radiation of daylight. A simple cabin on a lower deck had several inches of steel to protect against the deadly daylight. The invention of jet travel was a negative for vampires because it made long distances impossible. No airline flew only at night, and the lightweight skin of a commercial jet blocked little of the sun’s rays. Oberon and I barely noticed. Lonny was grounded without the Gulfstream we bought for him. “I know there’s money to be made,” he told us. “What if we rented out the Gulfstream when I am not using it?” “What if we just bought another?” Oberon said. “We don’t have to ground you completely.” “We could call it Air Foncé or Air Noir,” I said to show off my French. “Why not English?” Lonny said. “Cocoon Air or Obsidian Air.” “Night Flight,” I said, “or Night Air.” “Do you think you can make money from one or two jets?” “It is just an idea,” Lonny admitted. “I haven’t really put it through any business models.” “How would you do the plane? Full body shield? Shielded bedroom in the back like the Gulfstream or Airbus?” “Or a regular jet with luxury boxes or double-wide coffins,” Lonny laughed. “Let me look at some numbers to see if it would even be possible. Cessna makes some smaller jets, but they don’t have a long range. By the time you get up to a jet we can fly across an ocean, the cost is about fifteen hundred euros an hour in the air. To make money, we would have to charge four or five thousand euros an hour.”

“Expensive,” I said using mind-words. He had been doing some homework. “I want to contribute more,” Lonny said in our mind conversation. “Right now, I am an expense to you guys.” “Oh, please,” I laughed at him in my head, “you are keeping our empire running. I couldn’t do that even if I tried. Oberon’s not cut out for details like you handle. Anyway, you are decorative, so you don’t even have to be functional. You do both. You do great work and you have the most awesome butt I have ever seen.” “You can’t see me because you’re in New York and I’m in Germany,” Lonny said in his head, “but I’m blushing.” “Lonny, you know the hardest lesson I’ve learned in a hundred years?” I asked him. “What, great Master Vampire?” “‘To thine own self be true’,” I said. “Doesn’t sound… wait,” Lonny said. “Is that Shakespeare?” “Yes, Hamlet—the play, not the nelly vampire in Switzerland. Point is, Lonny, what do you want to do?” “What do I want to be when I grow up?” “Yeah,” I thought. “Useful,” he said in my head. “You want to do things that other people will value. Is that really being true to your own self?”

WORKERS digging the foundation of a new wing of the Bavarian house had found some Bronze Age tools. Lonny said some local archeologists had almost cum in their pants. “Even the woman archeologist,” he said. “I think she grew a dick just so she could get a hard-on.” He can be a total chauvinist sometimes without realizing it. What the workers found was quite an archeological treasure, and Lonny told them to take the time to excavate the area properly. He had plenty of other projects, and it would be okay for that extension to be delayed by a year or two. The contractor wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Sometimes Lonny reminds me of Menz, who was my mentor and the original owner of the estate. Menz’s attitude was that we should do everything right. If Lonny was doing major construction, he wanted to get everything right. And if that meant putting a stop to one part of the project so archeologists could document a find, then he would order work to stop. If nothing else, Lonny was vampire-done-right. Menz would be really proud of him.

Construction workers found some old documents rolled up in a leather sheath and stashed inside a wall. It was the room that Menz had used as his bedroom for several hundred years. He had built the current house back in the 1600s; several documents dated to that time. They could have been modern documents when Menz built the place. One document was more recent, and it seemed out of place against the others. Most were in an old form of German. The modern document was from the twentieth century, and it was in Latin. Lonny sent all the documents to the vampire queen of Europe. She lives close to a university in Bern, Switzerland, and she tries to send interesting projects to them. This was the kind of historical venture that would interest her friends at the school. Queen Cécile told me that she held back the modern document because it mentioned the Obscurati. I couldn’t understand why a document in Latin that mentioned the vampire’s secret enforcement squad would be hidden away in a Bavarian wall. She told me about it using mind-words. All vampires can communicate without words, but some are better than others. The queen is good enough that she can have a conversation just with me. When I chat using mind-words, every vampire in a thousand miles can hear me. It is like the telephones when I was a kid in Texas: about a dozen houses shared one phone line. They didn’t have enough technology for everyone to have their own private line. That’s me and mind-words: every vampire can hear. The queen asked me not to reply to her using anything other than “yes” or “no” or “I understand.” She knows I can’t shield my thoughts. This document in Latin was a contract. Someone had tried to hire the Obscurati to kill a human. We don’t do that. We don’t kill humans, and we only kill vampires who are out of control. We kill vampires who kill humans or other vampires. Menz had somehow got his hands on the document and had hidden it in the wall. It was all mysterious. Menz was my mentor, and he was not part of the Obscurati. He was a thousand years old when he was murdered, so I’m sure he knew about us. We never discussed it. Menz was dead now and unable to explain why he would have such a document. He was a peaceful vampire, and I thought it was not in his character to have such a document. “Who was hired?” I asked the queen. “Never mind that now,” she said in my head. She didn’t want me to know who was being hired or what human was supposed to be assassinated, and that only made me even more curious.

QUEEN CÉCILE was born, and that is the only thing she knows for sure. It was around the year 4000 BCE, but that is just a guess, because calendars didn’t exist. The whole idea of

“BCE” or “BC” or “AD” didn’t exist. She thinks that she was born somewhere in what we know as France, but that is just a guess. Cécile was not her original name. What she remembers is that life was hard. Her parents were part of a collective of three or four families that kept domesticated pigs and planted what she thinks was wheat or barley. It wasn’t rice. They lived in a long and narrow hut with the sleeping area at the back and the working area near the door. Cécile’s mother died from an animal attack when she was a child, and her father died a few years later. Almost nobody lived longer than twenty years. An animal attacked Cécile while she was walking in a wooded area one evening. “What do you want from me, Mårten?” the queen said. “It was six thousand years ago, for crying out loud. I forget some of the details.” What had attacked her wasn’t an animal but a vampire, maybe one of the original vampires. Her Maker turned her about the same way as mine had me. The asshole turned me but then just left. Cécile had to figure out everything on her own, just like me. I was turned while I was a prisoner of war in the Great War (the First World War). My Maker was a sadistic German guard—or somebody dressed like a guard—who raped me repeatedly. He took my blood without permission, and that is against vampire law, as I found out later. He made me a vampire without my permission, which is a capital offense. The prison guard dressed me in civilian clothes and abandoned me in a cave. Hey, it got me out of the POW camp. If you are ever a prisoner of war, I don’t recommend you use the same method of escape that I did. My revenge was that I got to kill the asshole. I got to kill him twice, because the first time didn’t get him as enduringly dead as we originally thought. Some friends rescued him so fast that nobody saw them switch out the asshole’s body for some ashes. The first time I killed him, it was more of a transient state. The second killing was amazing, and he was truly and permanently dead. I flew up to the dickweed and ripped his head completely off his sorry body, and I chucked the head onto a bonfire. I winked at him as I saw the flames strike his head, and he had a real startled expression as he burst into an inferno. Snap and crackle and ker-sizzle. Those were the days. I’d like to try for a third time because it was so much fun. It was some of my best work, if I do say so myself (and I do). The queen’s Maker just wanted her for sex. They had no common language other than sex. Within a few days, Cécile was as strong as her Maker and began attacking him. We all try to attack our Makers, but the queen became a threat to her Maker’s being because he was dead to the world longer each night. She was awake at dusk and ready to feed, and what better than the lifeless creature beside her? Vampire blood doesn’t help feed a vampire except at the beginning. We all have to feed from human or animal blood. Her Maker abandoned Cécile

one night. It was to protect himself, but she was on her own. She learned that daylight was something to avoid. That is something we all learn quickly, even without a teacher. Any vampire who doesn’t get that lesson doesn’t live past the first day or two. I learned about daylight through the School of Hard Gamma Rays. Without a teacher or mentor, I didn’t know that going out of my cave in the daylight would hurt. The damage to my skin was immediate, and I still remember my scorched flesh. It took decades for those gamma ray scars to go away. Ouch. I mean, friggin’ ouch. The experience of walking in the daylight gave me lessons unlikely to grow dim with the passage of time. It was a hundred years ago, and I still remember how badly my skin hurt. The queen learned how to hunt and kill animals and thought it was weird that she only craved their blood. Human blood was even better than animal blood. Cécile kept the human population in her part of the world on the verge of extinction because she didn’t know how to stop killing. She didn’t know that her saliva could close a human’s wound. Most of the humans bled out. She kept a few hostages in a coma to make her hunt easier. Cécile was as brutal to the vampire population as she was to humans because nobody had told her that she could exist without killing. She was naturally drawn to predatory behavior. It took a group of a half-dozen vampires to capture Cécile. They would have killed her, but their leader thought Cécile was attractive and decided to keep her as a concubine. They kept this wild killer in restraints until she was stronger than their biggest rope. Her captivity was a kind of lesson. It was also her first exposure to a strange, new kind of restraint made from interlocking loops of a brown substance. The world had moved away from pottery and botanical ropes and into the Bronze Age. As soon as she was strong enough to pull the metal chain apart, the local vampires discovered she could be kept in a little cave that was guarded by a row of rocks someone brought from far away. The vampire leader had been burned by touching the rock, and he thought it might eventually be useful. The rock was gray and white and brown. It was a mixture of silver and some other minerals, and it could have come from somewhere around the Mediterranean. Whatever the source, it was the key to keeping Cécile in her little prison cave. The half-dozen small rocks did what metal chains and organic rope were unable to do: keep Cécile from killing others. Cécile finally got the message that if she could control her hunger, the local vampires would treat her better. Over the course of several years, she trained herself. She was strong, but she learned to use her strength as a tool instead of letting it dominate her life. It took decades, but the vampire who thought she was attractive began to let her spend the daylight hours with him.

They all stayed in a massive underground cavern. The vampires shared the space with a colony of bats. It could have been the source of some fables about vampires being able to turn into bats. A storyteller could have seen one enter the cavern just before daylight but saw only a bat come out at sunset the next night. Cécile learned about levitation when a visiting clan of vampires came through the area. None of the half-dozen local vamps were able to float or fly. Monkey see, monkey do. When the visiting vampires tried to take over the cavern, she was in the middle of the fight because she was the only one who could get all the way up to the fight. All vampires are strong enough to jump, but only a few have the ability to stay up in the air or to control their flight. She had to learn about fighting in the middle of the fight. She didn’t know anything about battle at the start of the fight, but she was an expert by the time she was finished. What saved her was her ability to mimic. If you hit her with a kick, she then knew all about kicking. If you dodged her lunge, she could be an expert at dodgeball after a few tries. Cécile was able to drive off the other vampires, protecting her own local vampires. She fought to save the vampires who had kept her captive for years, but the locals quickly learned that Cécile was much more valuable as an ally than a prisoner. “It’s a vamp-eat-vamp world out there,” she told me. “We don’t kill other vampires unless they—” “Right,” she said, “but that’s a recent attitude. Vampires are territorial and don’t play well together. It was a hard lesson to learn, because we were always trying to grab new hunting territory. The first lesson was figuring out that a small group of vampires was more powerful than an individual, but they already knew that when I was turned.” Cécile was already a thousand years old before the first stone was erected at Stonehenge in England. She was born before the first pharaoh ruled Egypt. She was…. “Knock it off, Mårten,” she said in my head. “Girls don’t like it when you talk about their age.” “Yes, ma’am, but I think it is an amazing history.” “What’s amazing is that I survived all this time. If you tell everything you know, it will amaze everyone—if I let you survive the day.” “Sorry, Your Majesty. It isn’t that you’ve seen the written word change: you were around when somebody figured out the whole idea of ink and paint, stone tablets and parchment.” “Are you going to tell them about how I seduced Alexander the Great?” “No, ma’am,” I thought. “He was gay.” “So was Marie Antoinette, but nobody ever mentions that.” “You have got to be kidding me,” I told her in my head.

“Have you ever heard me kid about Marie Antoinette?” “No, ma’am.” “No, indeed. I would never kid about Marie Antoinette, like you would never make light of Saladin being gay.” “Who?” “See, you make my point. Just leave it as my odometer has rolled over many times over the centuries, and vampires always get more powerful with age.” “Like wine.” “Or vinegar, if you make me angry.” “Yes, ma’am. Saladin?” “Sûrement,” she said, “but I think he was a kind of bisexual Oberon. I know that he was intimate with men, but he sired an entire brigade of Saladettes.” “Whatever. I think it is impressive that you knew all these people.” “Are you calling me a whore?” “No, not that kind of ‘know’, Your Majesty. You were acquainted with so many people throughout history.”

OBERON and I had some vampire killing to do in the Ukraine and Scandinavia, so we packed up our implements of destruction and popped across the puddle for a few days. He could zip over the Atlantic while I struggled. He never laughed at me. “Come on, granny.” Okay, almost never. I was levitating as fast as I could because I knew that I would be in Lonny’s arms as soon as I landed. Several hours of cuddling and sex with both of my men was the thing I liked best. Because all three are vampires, this can keep happening for a thousand years. That adorable bubble-butt. Oberon’s gorgeous hair and drop-dead-stunning pair of eyes. “I love you,” Oberon was telling Lonny as I walked into the library. It is always great for me to hear him say that. Vampires can be deadly and territorial, so I am always nervous about any signs of a crack in our complicated relationship. “Group hug,” Lonny said, and I joined my husbands. We played with each other, standing in the library. Oberon began to unbutton Lonny’s shirt. “Bedroom?” Lonny asked. We were all in the bedroom in just a second. Lonny always wears clothes that he can remove quickly. Oberon’s Goth attire is more intricate, but he has vampire speed. You can’t even imagine how it looks for someone working at vampire speed to unbutton a shirt and unbutton the fly of an old pair of pants. Oberon was naked in short or-

der, but Lonny was already on the bed. I made my usual “fashionably late” entrance, only because I’m not as fast as the others. Don’t get me wrong: a human would barely be able to see me move. I am really fast on human scale, but most vampires are much faster than me. I’m fast. Oberon is just a blur. Lonny is vampire-fast running, but he can’t fly or levitate. By the time I floated onto the bed, Oberon was on top of Lonny. He had Lonny’s legs apart and was giving him a really wet kiss. Oberon has a larger-than-average uncut dick. He produces enough pre-cum that he really doesn’t need any extra lube. Vampires don’t catch HIV or any of the other sexual diseases, so we don’t bother with condoms. When humans are part of the sex scene, we often use rubbers to make them feel more at ease. They can’t give us HIV or syphilis, and we can’t give them any disease. Vampire bodies murder any virus except for hepatitis C, but it is more like a human catching a cold. As I landed near Lonny’s waist, I saw Oberon’s hand guiding his dick inside Lonny’s ass. Oberon’s first few thrusts are so slow you want to grab and pull him, but that is just the way he likes to fuck. It may take a minute or two for him to put his cock all the way inside, and he leaves it in there for several moments just to enjoy the feeling. As Oberon began pulling out, I moved my mouth over Lonny’s dick. The tip and his stomach were all wet from pre-cum. Tasty. Lonny has the sweetest-tasting cum I’ve ever had, and in over a hundred years, I have had plenty. I let my mouth stay still. Oberon’s thrusts made Lonny’s dick move in my mouth. Oberon slowly increased the tempo, and it was all I could do to keep my fangs from damaging Lonny’s dick. Vampires always have their fangs out during sex. If I have a hard-on, you can assume my fangs are out. I can’t control them. None of us can. Lonny felt so good. I smelled his stomach below and Oberon’s stomach above. My head was right between my two men. Lonny’s dick is about average, thicker than most, but it feels so good in my mouth. Oberon’s motion in Lonny’s hole was providing all the movement we needed. I felt Lonny about to shoot, so I pulled away. I didn’t want his load in my mouth. I wanted it up my ass. Being with these two men is why I keep going. Three vampires together: somehow it makes me feel more complete. Oberon is great by himself; Lonny is great by himself; but it is special on those rare times when we are all in the same bed at the same time. Oberon finally built up so he was fucking hard. I heard his balls slap against Lonny’s legs. What a wonderful sound. They were both grinning and enjoying themselves. I moved away slightly so I could watch. Oberon exploded into Lonny with a soft growl, and his pumping slowed down immediately. He knew what I wanted, so he didn’t linger inside Lonny. Oberon

and I often sleep with his dick in me. He is never in a huge rush to pull out, but this time he had reason to. As soon as he was out, Lonny rolled over on his side. “Wanna fuck?” he said. “Nope,” I whispered. “I want you to make love to me.” “Sorry, not tonight. I need a good, old-fashioned fuck.” And he did. Lonny hadn’t been inside me for a month or two, and he had been saving up cum all that time. I don’t think Lonny has sex with anybody when he is away from Oberon and me. Maybe he jacks off, but I doubt he even does that. Within just a moment, he had me twisted around. We were both on our sides, and my back was against his stomach. I felt Lonny’s dick parting my ass cheeks, and he was inside without any delay. He grabbed me around my waist, and I made us both float off the bed. Without me holding him, Lonny would just fall back onto the bed, because he can’t levitate. Most vampires can’t, but Lonny wanted a vampire fuck: suspended in midair. He wanted it, and I wanted to give it to him. He held onto me, and I held him tight. Oberon growled with pleasure: he liked what he saw, and he floated up to help Lonny stay in position. Lonny grabbed my waist and fucked me hard. We slowly rolled around in the air of the bedroom with his dick plowing my ass hard and fast. It took him about ten minutes to finish, and it was all hard, rough, and fast. I’m sure my ass cheeks were red from his legs slapping into them. I felt him explode inside me. One… two… three balls of sperm. I felt each one bulge through his dick and into my ass, each accompanied by a thrust and a deep grunt. Oberon had joined us in the air. We all hugged and kissed and cuddled as we slowly floated over to the bed. As daylight approached, Lonny’s now-soft dick stayed in my ass. Oberon hugged us both. A big wad of my cum was on the floor because I shot shortly after Lonny, with barely any help from my hand. We all calmed down and cuddled and kissed—three men in love with each other—and then we died for the day. Somehow it wasn’t just an orgy, and I’m not sure how to explain the difference. No, wait. Sex can be affirmational or recreational. This was an affirmation of how much the three of us love each other. Sure it was fun, but it was so much more. Oberon has a lot of sex for recreation. This was making love to the two men who share my life. When the three of us are together, it feels like we are one unit.

WHEN I came to the next night, I felt the finger of one of my husbands drawing circles around my right nipple. I opened an eye and….

Okay, it wasn’t one of my husbands. Oberon and Lonny had moved me to the edge of the bed and were busy having sex. Lonny doesn’t have to fuck every day, but Oberon seems to need it several times a day. Lonny is more than happy to oblige. My nipple was getting attention from a scantily dressed college boy. When he saw my eye open, he moved his wrist over my mouth and reached down to my crotch with his other hand. Breakfast in bed. I’m like Lonny in that I don’t have to have sex every day. When I have sex, I’d rather it be with Oberon and Lonny. But I’m not a prude, and the college kid seemed to want or need to play with my dick. I licked his arm and reached up under the leg of his shorts to find his cock. It was already rock-hard. I squeezed; he groaned. I pulled my hand out of his shorts just as he pushed them to the floor. My right hand now had unobstructed access to his dick and balls. Huge balls, nice cock too. I began to stroke his dick as I licked his wrist. As my stroke got faster, his breathing became more intense. I felt his orgasm building, so I let my fangs sink into his wrist. That pushed him over the edge, and he shot a load with a muffled scream. My palm felt the load coming out of his dick, but I didn’t feel any of it land on my stomach. Lonny stopped it with his mouth. He took the man’s cum. As soon as I had the wrist bleeding stopped, Lonny came up to kiss me. He shared the college kid’s cum with me as we kissed. We all look about the same age, but I’m older than the man’s great-grandfather. Everything swirls around in the life of a vampire, and I could be jaded without much effort. Oberon was standing beside the bed. He had just wiped off his dick with a towel but dropped the towel so he could give us a short standing ovation. The blood donor got dressed and left without saying anything. He did give all three of us short kisses, and he smiled warmly as he left the bedroom. “Did you guys eat already?” I asked. “Sure,” Oberon said. “You always sleep in.” Chapter 2

Chapter 2 LONNY wanted to go to Finland with us. He doesn’t officially know about the Obscurati, but he does know. You can’t be in a ménage à trois without everybody knowing everything. We never discussed it, but he knew. It is the size of our income that makes Lonny look for ways to help. He enjoys running the properties, but he needs some kind of income. He needs gold and euros to validate his parking ticket. He’s crazy. I love him, and I understand him, but he doesn’t have to make a huge amount of money to be part of my life… or Oberon’s life. We are a three-person unit, and we all love each other. The trouble with going to Finland was that Lonny couldn’t levitate. Oberon is wicked-fast at flying. I can fly, but slower than him. Lonny is a fast runner, but he can’t fly. We left the Airbus A330 at the Teterboro Airport near New York City. Taking Lonny would mean we would need to take the Gulfstream. That isn’t a complaint, because I always like being around Lonny. The Gulfstream is a model G650 that clips along at about eighty percent the speed of sound. I fly at ten times the speed of sound, and Oberon is faster than that. But the Gulfstream is really fast for a jet. It is the way Lonny gets around. We bought the Gulfstream just for him. It cost over €50 million ($65 million) to buy and another €6 million to upgrade the interior to vampire standards, but now Lonny can get anywhere he wants. The jet can also take a dozen human staff (blood donors, workers, and so on). For the trip to Finland, the Gulfstream would be full. We would need to pack plenty of ammunition because Oberon goes for overkill. Every staff chair would be full because three vampires go though quite a few humans over the course of a few days. Oberon and I talked about flying to Finland on our own but decided to take the slower route. Listen to me: a Gulfstream G650 is the slower method. It makes me feel fast somehow. The little jet has a gamma radiation shield over the rear half of the plane. There is space back there for four vampires, but it is tight. It was crowded with just the three of us. Four would be too cozy for my taste. That left a little room for the humans. Each staff chair turned into a bed. We would all be spending the day onboard the jet in Finland. The humans all have passports, but most vampires are just blanks as far as immigration systems are concerned. Oberon and I just hop from one country to the next without any trouble. We had to get forged documents for Lonny, because he doesn’t hop. Queen Cécile got Lonny’s documents and promised to help keep them current. Lonny has to go through customs like the humans. We all have documents, but Lonny is the only one

likely to need them. Oberon and I just get out of the jet and we’re into the country before anybody can see us. The human brain doesn’t process a body-shape moving at vampire speed, so we are basically invisible. Finland is part of the European Union, and that makes moving about simpler for Lonny. In older times, a border guard might keep you for an hour or more. Somehow the queen can keep the Europol and Schengen Information Systems clean so far as we vampires are concerned. I don’t know how. I don’t want to know how. “Money.” It was the queen in my head. She can read my thoughts any time she wants. When I am in Europe, my mind is like an open book to her. “Oberon is a better read, of course,” she said in my head. “He’s one horny vampire.” “Yes, ma’am,” I thought. “Money takes care of all the police agencies and databases of criminals,” she said using mind-words. “Good to know,” I thought. Oberon decided to leave most of his resupply of ammunition in Germany. He didn’t want to take the extra time to secure the explosives. It is always inconvenient to have to explain why a private jet would have more firepower than some countries. We would be so close to home that he could flash down to Bavaria to get whatever he needed. I never know how much the pilots know about what they are carrying. If they knew the truth about how much black powder is in the cargo area of the jet, they’d be nervous. Maybe they’d refuse to fly.

“YOU will be landing in Jyväskylä.” It was Pierre, the queen’s main assistant. He is a very old creature. I think Pierre is a vampire, but he doesn’t set off my vamp-dar like others. He is the only one who can sneak up on me without me knowing. Either he can cloak his presence better than anybody else, or he is some kind of creature other than human, other than vampire. Pierre surprised everyone a few years ago when he fell in love with our friend Hamlet, who is the most effeminate vampire you can imagine. Pierre was always with a woman, but there was something about Hamlet that made him change. They were married in a chapel on our property in Germany, but they live in Bern. Pierre is the queen’s head of everything. “What is this, a conference call?” I asked, and I have no idea what the pronunciation of the city’s name is. Trying to pronounce it almost made my fangs fall out. So just trust me: Jyväskylä is a town in the middle of nowhere in Finland. Pierre gave Oberon the longitude and latitude of where we were to meet our guide, and Oberon punched all the numbers into his wrist-mounted GPS. By the time the jet came to a

stop, I had all the weapons and gear ready, and Oberon knew where we were going. “Come on, Grandpa,” he said. “You’re burning moonlight.” “Bite me,” I said. “Not enough time to snack, lover, but thanks for the offer,” he said with a wink. The Gulfstream has only one door, and it is on the port side of the cabin. Our pilots try to keep the door out of sight of humans, but that isn’t always possible. This time the door opened directly out to the terminal: annoying but not impossible. The Jyväskylä airport is fairly small. It is served by a couple of public commercial carriers, and it also has Finland’s Air Force Academy. There is always some kind of activity, and they have plenty of radar and other sniffing devices. Oberon and I would have to hustle. He grabbed the duffel bag and shot out of the cabin like a rocket. I had the sniper rifle and did my best to keep up, which was all I could do. Oberon was waiting for me about a thousand meters in the air and just north of the airport. We were going away from Jyväskylä. Isn’t that a cool name? Jyväskylä. Jyväskylä. Jyväskylä. We were at the site in a minute. Oberon glided down when he spotted our guide, and I followed. The guide had explained to Oberon that the bad vampire was in a cabin beside a big lake that was a couple of kilometers away. Our perch was on top of a hill, and I had a fairly good view of the main door of the cabin. It wasn’t a huge view, but I didn’t really need a panoramic vista. All of a sudden, I could hear someone screaming. The vampire was dragging a human toward the house. I didn’t have time for Oberon to do his computations. I didn’t even have time to set up the Barrett M82A1 rifle. Two kilometers is quite a distance, but I just didn’t have time. If I waited, the human would be dead, and the vamp would be inside the cabin. I pulled the lever to get a round in the chamber with a clank, rolled the safety knob to a vertical position, took aim as best I could, and squeezed the trigger. Swing-and-a-miss. Skit. Skit. Skit. To say the vampire was startled was an understatement. This vampire was female and a teenager when she had been turned. That almost never works out well. No human should be turned as a teenager. The brain inside someone so young is out of control. She was clearly out of control. It wasn’t her fault, but she had to be stopped. The bullet scared the crap out of the teenaged vampire, and she released her human victim and ran into the cabin. The human stood motionless for a minute but then realized that escape was possible. As the human scrambled to safety, our vampire guide started to leave. The guide assumed that we would call it a night and return the next night to finish the job. He didn’t know

how serious we are about our work. Oberon was busy with his instruments and computers, and I took a moment to reload with incendiary rounds. I didn’t need armor-piercing ammunition, just the kind that goes boom with flame and vigor. If I can’t make a vampire’s head explode, then I can make the cabin explode. Fire is usually my second choice. Either ploy works, maybe for the same reason. The cabin was made out of wood, so it would go up nicely. I found a window and noticed the vampire standing well away from the window. She had the cabin dark and was scared. I felt sorry for her because it wasn’t her fault, but she was killing humans. The local vampires had tried to control her, and they had lost vampires to her ferocity. Oberon passed trajectory information to me using sign language, and I adjusted the rifle. This time I could take more time with the shot. I didn’t have to be too accurate. A cabin is a bigger target than a teenager’s head. I only needed to hit the burnable parts of the cabin, which were almost all the parts. My first round went through the front window, and I thought it might have hit the vampire. There was a quick sizzle inside, but I couldn’t tell if it was the vampire exploding or the bullet setting fire to the rug. It didn’t matter: I had a whole clip of bullets, and I intended to put all of them into the wooden cabin. Two, three, four rounds went through the window. Five took the door off its hinges. Six, seven, eight went through the hole where the door used to be. The cabin was ablaze. I left a few cartridges in the rifle in case we saw a vampire trying to dart out to safety. There was no chance the vampire inside had survived my attack. Oberon watched the sides and back of the cabin to see if there were any signs of an escaping vampire. He has a kind of telescope with a built-in laser range-finder. The telescope lets him put a little red dot near the target, and then it computes the range within a millimeter or two. It shows up as numbers on the telescope lens. So he sees the target, the little laser light, and the distance in meters. This time he was using binoculars to watch the area around the cabin. They have powerful lenses, but they don’t have any electronics. Oberon saw nothing leaving the cabin. One vampire didn’t just “bite” the dust: she became part of the dust. It is really sad when I have to kill somebody so young. I wiped a blood-red tear from my cheek as I grabbed the sniper rifle and raced upwards. My husband followed after a couple of minutes. He had his duffel bag of equipment and the gold bar that was our payment. The locals were pleased. Our guide probably called out to others to come help in getting water on the cabin. They didn’t want central Finland to go up in flames. Oberon beat me back to the Gulfstream. I had a head start, but he got there first. It’s humiliating, but then I remember that I can make shots that he can only dream about. And I’m

much better in an old-fashioned brawl. If there’s a bar fight, pick me instead of Oberon or you’ll be sorry. He’s adorable, smart, and really fast, but I fight better. Lonny stayed behind. He was in the jet, playing poker with some of the humans. That is always a mistake, and they should have known better. Lonny is a great poker player. Instead of playing for money or matches or chips, the group was playing strip poker. Lonny was fully clothed. As I stashed my duffel bag, Oberon was talking to the pilots. They were studying maps of Europe and discussing our next stop. We had to head into the Ukraine, which is outside the European Union. The pilots wanted to land in Poland instead of crossing out of the EU. That was fine with Oberon because he didn’t have to worry about getting all his equipment and supplies through customs. I knew he would probably zip down to our home in Bavaria to restock before the next mission. In fact, we could have done the entire trip from our home base in Bavaria, but Lonny wanted to tag along. Lonny, oh yeah…. He had four of our blood donors naked, and one member of the flight crew was down to nothing but underwear and one sock. Before you play strip poker with Lonny, make sure that the room is warm enough, because you will end up without clothes. I motioned toward the back of the jet, and Lonny took the hint. We went into the bedroom and closed the door, leaving several underdressed humans in the main part of the Gulfstream. Lonny and I sat on a sofa that turned into a small bed. We cuddled and kissed, staying fully dressed. “I want to play with your butt,” I finally told him. “You always want to play with my butt,” Lonny said. “For a bottom, some counselors might think your obsession with my ass is a little weird.” “Is that a complaint?” His answer was clear: he stood up and got out of his clothes and lay facedown on the bed. He moved his arms and legs like he was making a snow angel on the sheets. I stretched out beside him on my side. We were as close as two people can get, and I placed my palm on top of that magnificent ass. It was the last thing I remembered for the day. When I woke up, it was the next night. Lonny and I hadn’t moved. Oberon was already awake and was fucking his breakfast. It is impossible to keep up with my oversexed husband, and I don’t try. “Playing with your food?” I asked. He just grinned. Watching him plow someone’s hole is nice, homey somehow.

I know… I know… it’s complicated.

THE jet wasn’t moving. I guessed that we had flown during the daylight hours and had already landed in Poland. By the time Lonny and I woke and fed, Oberon had already fed and was finished with his first fuck of the day. “It is raining in Bavaria,” Oberon said. He knew this because he had made a trip to our home to restock his ammunition. Like I said, Oberon is one of the fastest vampires on the planet. He was up, fed, fucked, shaved, dressed, and restocked before I was awake. It would be impossible for me, but doing all that is no big deal to him. I shaved in the private bathroom as the humans left our bedroom on the Gulfstream. I guess you would call it a bathroom, even though there is no bath and no toilet. Vampires don’t need a toilet, and the Gulfstream is too small for a bathtub. The little room can be used as a shower in an emergency, but we usually use the sink and mirror for shaving and cleaning up after a job. Oberon filled me in on the mission. Pierre had given the details directly to Oberon. It was a teenager again. I hate killing teenagers, and this was going to be really sad: it was a boy of thirteen. He promised me that the Maker had already been killed and the locals had already tried to kill the boy. You can’t turn a thirteen-year-old: it never ends up well. The boy was a predator without knowing it is bad to kill humans. He had to be stopped, and I was the only one who could do it. The boy had his lair way up in (Chernobyl). Humans had evacuated the city back in the 1980s when a big nuclear power plant exploded. The vampire kid thought he was smart using as his home, because there are enough gamma rays to keep away both humans and vampires. The kid had fashioned himself a shielded room, protected both from the sun and from the remnants of the power plant explosion. The closer we got, the worse I felt. It was like trying to stay awake with the sun up. Oberon felt it too. The local gave us both radiation suits to wear, and all three of us got inside what little protection they offered. I’m sure they were great, maybe even good enough to let a vampire walk around in the daylight. You just can’t duplicate a dozen millimeters of metal shielding with anything you can wear. I wasn’t even sure that I could keep the suit on to make my shot, but I had to try. We were back around my upper range with the Barrett M82A1. The rifle could make a longer shot, but I couldn’t. I kept us as far away as possible because of the radiation. It wasn’t due to any stealth issues. I’m sure the Ukrainian engineers had done the best they could in

sealing the reactor, but it was still deadly and noticeable to vampires. The kid was smart. Oberon got his equipment set up as fast as he could. He didn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. When he told me how to adjust the sight, I told him to go back to the Gulfstream. He refused, of course, but I did try. It was obvious that we were both feeling the radiation. The guide was too, and I hoped he had volunteered for guide duty. When our guide said (Ukraine), it sounded like “eee-krah’eee-nyah,” or something like that. I think he was local, but I’m not sure. When he said the name of the city, you could see his mouth twist up in a kind of snarl. He didn’t like the city. It wasn’t long before I saw the boy. He was carrying a big sheet of metal in front of him. That was how he was able to get so close to the reactor. The sheet had to be fifty millimeters thick, so the kid was really strong. His protective sheet had two rings or handles, and he could hold it up without exposing any of his knuckles. The boy was able to move fairly well. The shield was bulky, but he was strong. Vampires are stronger than humans, but it is still a little weird to see a boy holding onto a big sheet of thick metal without straining. I aimed, relaxed, and squeezed the trigger. The boy was moving left-to-right in front of me, and I didn’t calculate his speed correctly. The bullet hit the shield instead of the young vampire. It hit with enough force that it exploded against the lead or aluminum panel, sending shrapnel into the young vampire’s head. The silver ammunition shredded itself on impact, and it broke off some parts of the shield. They became like a hundred pellets that blasted into the kid. He was immobilized, and he let the shield fall. It fell backward, trapping him underneath the panel. Now what? The kid was probably alive, because he didn’t burst into flames like I expected, but I couldn’t get close to the shield because of the radiation. I just guessed. I could see one leg sticking out from under the shield, so I fired. My best guess is that the bullet struck his ass or back. Sometimes close is good enough when you have 0.50-caliber ammunition. It was like lobbing a grenade under the boy’s shield. When the bullet exploded, the shield moved away to reveal the young vampire’s body. As soon as I saw the fireball, I grabbed the rifle and flew upwards. This time, both Oberon and the guide were following. Guides don’t usually follow, but I couldn’t blame this one. It was toxic down below. When we were at a safe distance, we landed in a wooded area and got out of the radiation suits. The pay: €100,000 ($125,000). The locals wanted this “situation” dealt with. I did it, and it really hurt me to do it. I wanted to find the kid’s family and give them the money, but there was no way of knowing who they were.

BY THE time we made it back to Poland, the effects of the radiation were beginning to go away. The knowledge that I had dropped a thirteen-year-old boy would stay with me much

longer. I hate those assignments, even if I know they are necessary. As soon as we were back on the jet, the pilots started the engines. We were rolling toward the runway before we were seated. I think that’s probably against one or two regulations, but the pilots really wanted to get home. We wanted that too. Home, but which one? Chapter 3

Chapter 3 “ANOTHER child?” “Yeah, Father,” I said. There is a park bench near the church building at Lechmont Manor. The church is, technically, private property, but an Old Catholic parish has used the church for longer than I’ve been in Germany. The priest is Father Johannes. He’s been at the parish for more than ninety years, and he never goes out in the daylight. Services at our church are always at night, so I think he must be a vampire. Whenever I need to go somewhere to think, I land at the park bench. Lechmont Manor can be covered in snow, but that doesn’t bother me. Vampires don’t feel temperature. Somehow, Father Johannes always knows when something is wrong. I don’t know if he lives nearby or if he has some electronic sensors, but he always knows. It is almost like he has a Mårten-sensing device built into the park bench. The only thing weirder than his ability to smell my troubles is that he twists my brain into a bowl of pasta. If you want to understand something, go somewhere else. This priest doesn’t offer comfort in the traditional meaning. He says things to get my mind to grow or change or see things differently, and comfort is rarely on his agenda. “I had to kill a kid,” I told him. “He was really young, like twelve or so.” “How can I help?” “How do I reconcile ‘thou shalt not kill’ with what I do?” “Are you Jewish?” “No, Father Johannes, you know I’m not.” “Okay, not to put too fine a point on the Bible, you just quoted part of the Jewish scripture.” “Mommy was Lutheran,” I said. “So it’s okay for American-born vampires of Scandinavian descent to kill little kids?” I asked. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Mårten.” “What are you saying, Father?” “I’m not really saying anything,” Father Johannes admitted. “I’m trying to get you to a point where you can find your own answer.” “What about the Ten Commandments?” “I don’t think that Moses knew about the boy, so it is unfair to complain that he wasn’t mentioned by name.” “Huh? No, I’m not saying… I mean….”

“There’s a difference between killing and murdering. What you did wasn’t really murder, or I don’t think it was. The Church has always taught that taking a human life is sometimes the only right action.” “And you believe that?” “We aren’t talking about what I believe, Mårten.” “The kid was killing humans and vampires, but he didn’t know what he was doing was bad.” “So you were protecting humans and vampires. You kept the kid from killing many more humans and vampires. That’s why they called you, isn’t it?” “Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself, but it was a kid.” “Was the kid a vampire?” “Yeah,” I said with a tear in my eye. “Technically, the kid was already dead then. And you know it never works well to turn a child into a vampire.” “Why does it always make me feel bad to put one of those vampires down?” “Because you have more morality in your little finger than ten holy monks rolled up together in sackcloth, Mårten. What you do is necessary because many others would be killed if you didn’t. I couldn’t do it, because I’m not a skilled marksman, but I know you will make it so the child doesn’t suffer.” “I try, but this latest one probably suffered a little.” “Interesting. Okay, now I have an opinion.” “Father?” “Close your eyes, and ask for forgiveness from the child’s soul and his guardian angel.” “Will that help?” “I have no idea what it will do, but I think you ought to try it.” “I’ve been coming to talk religion with you for ninety years,” I said. “I remember all of them.” “That is the first time you offered me real advice.” “I know. I screwed up,” Father Johannes said. “If you tell anybody, I will deny it.” “Let me see if I can get advice on another topic,” I said. “I’m not done with the kid, but I will try what you said.” “What’s your other one, then?” “Oberon,” I said after thinking about it for a while. “You are planning on killing Oberon?” the priest asked. He never lets me know when he is giving me a hard time or kidding me.

“No, of course not, Father. But should I worry about how much sex Oberon has outside our relationship?” “Worry? How?” “I mean, fornication is talked about in the Bible, and it is considered a bad thing.” “Oh, I see,” the priest whispered. “If Oberon has something to confess, shouldn’t he be the one to confess it? You’re a vampire, right?” “So are you,” I said. “Shhh. This is about you, Mårten,” Father Johannes said. “You’re gay too.” “Big deal. Are you going to tell me that being gay is wrong?” “And you are part of a ménage à trois,” the priest chuckled. “So?” I could feel my temper starting to rise. “Gay vampire in a ménage à trois. Most people would start having questions before they get to extramarital affairs in an ‘open’ relationship. You know, I’m just sayin’….” “What about Oberon?” “Does he endanger the humans with unsafe sex?” “Vampires can’t spread disease. But when there’s more than one human, everyone wears a condom.” “Always?” “Always,” I whisper, not really knowing where Father Johannes was heading. “Is he breaking any promises to you?” “No.” “To Lonny?” “No.” “You knew he had a huge sex drive before you became a couple, right?” “Right,” I admitted. “And after a hundred years of being in this relationship, you think you need to change the ground rules?” “No, but… I mean….” “You knew about his sex drive before you moved in together.” “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Did you ask him to change before you started your relationship?” “No, I was okay with it.” “Are you still okay with it?” “Um… I guess what… I mean, the Bible says….” “We’re not talking about what some dead guys in Israel said a couple of thousand years ago, Mårten. I am asking you about your relationship. Does his sex rob you of affection?”

“No.” “Does Oberon’s sex drive harm you emotionally or spiritually?” “No,” I said. “Physically?” “He rubs me raw some nights, but otherwise, no.” “Does it harm Lonny or his emotional or spiritual or physical being?” “He’s okay with it too,” I said. “Help me understand where the problem is,” the priest said with a grin. “You’re telling me that it is okay for guys to boink everything in sight?” “I told you nothing of the sort,” the priest said. “What I am trying to get you to do is let me know about your relationship with Oberon and Lonny. I am saying that it kind of sounds like Mårten is trying to find a problem where there isn’t one.” “What about morality?” “Keeping your promise is the most moral thing you can do,” the priest said. “Fornication is okay? We can all go around fucking like bunny rabbits?” “I didn’t say that either, Mårten,” Father Johannes said. I looked around for some kind of weapon to bop him over his head. This priest is the most maddening creature anywhere. “But….” “You want simple rules, and I don’t have any. Do you know why you are thinking about Oberon’s sex life right now?” “No… but isn’t… I mean… if it is wrong, shouldn’t I do something?” “Very good, Mårten,” he said. “After ninety years, I finally heard a wise question from you. Talk to me about you, and I’m there. If you want to talk about Oberon’s sins, that’s gossip. I won’t be any part of it.” “No, I mean the rules,” I said. “Rules. If you read the Christian scripture, you will find that Saint Paul was against all kinds of sex. Paul convinced several married women to stop having sex with their husbands, and the husbands got really angry about that. I think a few husbands chased Paul out of town. He was a busybody who meddled in places he had no business—” “You speak with the authority of somebody who was there,” I said. “This is not about me,” the priest said with a grin. I think I may have hit a raw nerve. Because vampires can live thousands of years, it changes the whole dynamic on conversations. Some vamps don’t need college degrees or references because they were around as original witnesses. “The Old Testament had lots of rules,” he continued. “There are so many rules that nobody could follow all of them. But the Gospels are unique: there’s one group that gets a

major part of the wrath of Jesus.” “Sinners?” “No, he’d have to be angry with everybody. We all sin. It’s the scribes.” “Scribes?” “You can think of them as religious lawyers,” the priest said. “Jesus was always talking down to them and blaming them for everything.” “Were they evil?” “No, not at all,” he said. “I’m sure most of them were well-meaning… misinformed, maybe, but well-meaning. Jesus picked on them because they were more interested in ink and parchment. They had all these rules about keeping the Sabbath—and that’s a good thing—but they said it was sinful to feed the poor if they got hungry on the Sabbath. Jesus said that the needs of the poor were more important than some stupid rules. You should care about feeding the poor and visiting prisoners and comforting those who are sick or mourn. Scribes were all about right thinking, and Jesus tried to get everybody in good standing with each other. Saint Augustine, who was a bishop in Africa way back at the beginning, said ‘Love God and do what you want’. He was kind of a hero to me.” “Did you know Augustine personally?” “None of your business,” the priest said. “Maybe you really are Bishop Augustine.” “Focus, Mårten. This is about you, not me.” “So let Oberon have sex with dozens of others? What if it is an addiction?” “You found the only question about Oberon’s sex drive that I am willing to discuss with you.” “Sex addiction?” “Exactly. Does his sex cause harm to you or him or Lonny or anybody else?” “I don’t think so, but is he addicted to sex? I mean, should we get him into rehab or counseling?” “Has his need for sex changed over the years?” “Not really, Father.” “I’m not an expert, but I think an addiction grows with time. In other words, he would need to have sex more today than he did yesterday just to feed the addiction. If Oberon’s needs cause you or Lonny problems, we need to act. By all means.” “What about the sex itself? Isn’t it being sinful?” “You are being sinful?” “No, Father, I was talking about Oberon.”

“Mårten, I am not going to discuss Oberon’s sins with you,” he said seriously and simply. “He’s a big boy. If Oberon wants to confess something, I am always open to him.” “So I shouldn’t be concerned that fornication is a sin?” “If you are asking if fornication is a sin,” Father Johannes said, “yeah, it probably is. Breathing is most likely a sin too. Thinking ill toward your neighbor is a sin, and Jesus says wishing somebody harm is just as bad as doing physical harm. If you want me to sit here and condemn Oberon, you’ve come to the wrong priest. If you want me to condemn you or to praise you for killing a child murderer, I am not going to do that either. How’s your relationship with Oberon? Do you love him?” “More than anything, Father Johannes. More than anything.” “Does he love you?” “Yeah, he really does, and we both love Lonny.” “Have you told them lately?” “Um….” “Wrong answer,” the priest said. “Why don’t you pack up your husbands and go to your island for a few weeks? Spend a week or two telling them both how much you love them. Enjoy being with them without trying to make them fit into some old fuddy-duddy’s mold. Best I can tell, you are way beyond the run-of-the-mill relationship.” “Not exactly normal, Father.” “Pig-crap, Mårten,” the priest said. “You got an English dictionary?” “English-German?” “No, just English with words and definitions,” the priest snapped. “Sure.” “Two words—here, I will write them down for you so you can look them up. Normal. Normative.” And with that, the priest was gone. He always leaves me when he is done. Father Johannes, the Old Catholic priest. He is one deeply disturbing vampire. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 “NEW YORK?” Pierre said. “Great!” “We wanted some relaxation,” I said. “We were going to the island.” “Fine, but first I need you to go meet some vampires in the States. They are having trouble that they can’t solve. They can’t even locate the troublemaker.” “Tracking?” I said. “Yeah, tracking. You remember how to do that?” “Cute.” The vampire king of the Americas had a real problem with a vamp somewhere in the Tennessee Valley. The king wasn’t sure exactly where, and the local vampires were unable to find him. After resting only for one day, Oberon and I bid Lonny farewell and went to see the queen before we headed across the Atlantic. Lonny could continue with his remodeling project for a while. We would all go to the South Pacific after a short side trip to New York. “This document that Lonny found…,” Pierre said in my mind. “The one in Latin.” “Quite so, the one in Latin. It has me concerned. The document is actually an agreement to kill the head of the Roman Catholic Church.” “Holy….” “…shit,” Queen Cécile said as she greeted us in the lobby of her building in Switzerland. “I know. Holy shit is right. I don’t know any of these participants, or they were using pseudonyms. The trouble is that I can smell two very old vampires on the paper itself. One is Menz.” “He must have been the one who put the document in the wall.” “Maybe,” she said. “It was his house for hundreds of years. But there is the smell of another vampire I haven’t seen in decades. I did some quiet checking, and this other vampire has not been seen by any other vampire in the world in years. It is like he just disappeared.” “Dead, maybe.” “I assume so,” Pierre said as he arrived in the atrium, “but it would have been nice to know about it.” “The African and I weren’t friends,” the queen said, “but he was part of the Obscurati. He was very old and very powerful.” “I didn’t know him either,” Pierre volunteered. “Was Menz working with him?”

“I can’t tell from the paper. Did Lonny find anything else in the wall?” “No,” Oberon said. “So, now what?” I asked. “Now we go on about our business,” the queen said quietly. “If anyone asks about the document, please tell them it is in Switzerland because an archeologist is interested.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “No more questions on this. Okay?” “Sure,” Oberon said, and with that, Oberon and I were flying again. That was the strangest conversation I’d ever had with Queen Cécile. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the document, or maybe she knew more than she was saying, or maybe she needed a sounding board, or maybe…. “Or maybe you should just deal with your own work,” said the queen in my head. Oberon and I landed at our building in New York only long enough to check in and warn the staff that we were back. They like to know these things. Maybe they have orgies or rent out our building to movie studios when we’re gone. I don’t care. If they are making money and not causing any damage, I can’t really complain. If there is one thing I can do even better than shoot, it is track. Give me something the vampire has touched and I can smell or sense that vampire and find where it went. Even without a specific smell, I can feel the presence of most vampires. Not all, but most. There was something going on in Tennessee and Kentucky, which are two inland states of the USA. Humans were dying at an alarming rate, and they were drained of blood. That got the attention of the news media, and that’s when the local vampires took notice. They had to clean things up or the vampire king would be forced to help. King Nopaltzin lives in Mexico, but he goes all the way back before the influx of Europeans. The king lives near Popocatépetl, a volcano near Mexico City. He has lived there since he was a kid, before there was a Mexico or a Mexico City. The king of the Americas is an Aztec, and he gets really annoyed when the vamps up north cause trouble. The locals were worried about the out-of-control vampire, but they were really scared of King Nopaltzin down in Mexico. They wanted this wing nut found and destroyed. Oberon and I met our guide in a forest outside Smithville, Tennessee. It is as rural as you can get. I think they marry their cousins or something there. They can smell an outsider as well as I can smell a vampire. I wonder what they would do if they ever found out a whole vampire lair was in a heavily wooded part of a hill outside of town. I wonder if they’d even care, because the vampires had been around so long. They were like part of the family, even if they kept weird hours.

There was a body that the vampires had found nearby. The people who lived in the middle of nowhere called Smithville the middle of nowhere, so you can just imagine. Our guide took us to the body. It was drained of blood, and it had three wounds. Each wound consisted of two holes, like fangs might make. The distance between the fangs was different for each wound. My head was spinning because none of it was making sense. If we were dealing with a single wild vampire, the fang marks would have been the same. Then, I have never heard of a vampire attack that was so precise. Each wound was like a wound I might put into a blood donor’s wrist. Neat. Clean. No tearing. So, we had three vampires who were killing but were doing so with surgical skills? What was more, I got nothing from my sense. Occasionally a vampire can mask himself or herself, but not three. We had three attackers, and I was getting nothing. “I don’t think it is a vampire,” I told Oberon. Hell, I said it loud enough that the guide heard me. I never do that because we are the Obscurati: we are never heard or seen. We are just deadly. All I could do was shake my head. “I got nothing here,” I said. “Thank you for your honesty.” Our guide was talking to us, and that isn’t supposed to happen. The Obscurati don’t have conversations with anybody. Maybe he didn’t know the protocol. “I’m Nopaltzin,” he said. No protocol really covered this. We’d never met vampire royalty out in the field. It was the Aztec king using actual words. King Nopaltzin was there in person. Our guide was the vampire king of the Americas. “Sorry, sir,” Oberon said. “No, no, no apology needed,” the king said. “Queen Cécile assured me that you would give an honest assessment. You came to the same conclusion as me. This is not vampire, but it makes everything complicated for us. I didn’t introduce myself earlier so you could concentrate on the evidence.” I continued to look and try to get a smell or sense or something. I tried to make sense of this poor man’s demise, but none of it made sense. “Were-woodpeckers,” I said, but it didn’t translate well for the king. He thought I was being serious. “Funny,” Oberon said as a way to let the king know I was trying to make a joke. I just shrugged because… well, because I didn’t know what else to do. Oberon was ready to build a house in the area because he didn’t want to give up. He wanted us to stay on the job until we fixed it. The Obscurati are always the last ones you call

when nothing else works. If we couldn’t fix it, the poor king of the Americas was in a tank full of pig shit. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 “OBERON? Mårten? Hamlet? Pierre?” It was Lonny, screaming in my mind. Something was wrong. “What is it?” Pierre asked. Pierre and Hamlet were at their home in Bern, Switzerland. I turned Hamlet a hundred years ago. He and Pierre have been a couple for just a few years. “Help!” Lonny screamed in our heads. “We’ll be there in two minutes,” Pierre said. Since they were closer to Bavaria, they could literally get there in a couple of minutes. Pierre is really old and looks like he could be a Marine or SWAT officer. Every pore of his body tells you that he is one person who can take care of himself. I think he is a vampire, but I have never seen his fangs. Hamlet is the most effeminate vampire you can imagine. He is also one of the deadliest. For some reason, the sissy of our little group of friends is a top-notch karate kung fu blackbelt warrior. I always feel safe and protected when Pierre and Hamlet are around. They can take down almost anyone who wants to cause trouble. Pierre would do so out of duty and training. Hamlet just likes toppling bullies. If you are a “gay-basher,” Hamlet is likely to pull your head right off your body. He’ll attack with a shit-eating grin. And if you make him break a fingernail, he’s going to curse you while he watches you die. I’m just sayin’…. Lonny was in trouble. As soon as his cry for help went out, Hamlet and Pierre were in the air and heading toward southern Germany. Queen Cécile probably heard the cry for help and sent some reinforcements without being asked. You don’t become vampire royalty by being quiet and dainty and retiring, and she knows Lonny would never scream out for help unless he really needed to have cavalry riding up quickly. Oberon headed to the roof of our New York building. He was in the air and heading to Germany in just a few seconds. I was shaking out of fear for Lonny, and I felt so powerless to help or do anything. Oberon left because he is much faster than me. I had to tell the human staff that we were leaving for a few days and then grab my sniper rifle and Oberon’s big bag of ammunition, computers, and supplies. I was airborne within a few minutes, but Oberon was halfway across the Atlantic by then. Oberon is the brains, but he isn’t a fighter. I was crying, scared shitless about Lonny and about Oberon running into a situation he couldn’t handle. I dropped one of the canvas bags but caught it before it hit the water. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” I said, cursing my balance. I had already crashed into a seagull just after leaving New York, and that had really hurt. The ammo bag was bloody. The seagull was

dead. I almost hit a passenger jet over France because I wasn’t watching where I was going. That would have hurt, and it probably would have brought down the small KLM plane. I swerved with only a second to spare. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” I said, cursing my trajectory. I was blinded with fear and ready to start fighting the second I landed. By the time I was in the house in Bavaria, it was crowded. Oberon, Lonny, Pierre, Hamlet, and several other vampires were clustered in a hallway in the sleeping wing of the mansion. There was a human worker trying to seal up a broken door by nailing planks across it. This wing of the house consists of a dozen or so bedrooms, and they are all undergoing renovation. Pierre got the worker to stop nailing while Oberon retreated to the basement. We keep an arsenal locked up under the house, and Oberon was fetching a length of silver chain. All you have to do is cover a door with silver chain and no vampire can get through the door. Oberon couldn’t carry the chain in his bare hands, so he picked it up with a big rag. He got the human worker to spread the chain across the door. Bam! went the wall as something inside the room hit it. There was the most awful growl, like a wounded animal was inside. Bam! again. One of my talents is the ability to sense other vampires. If you are anywhere close to me, I know you are there. There are a few exceptions, like Pierre. He can sneak up close enough to touch me without me noticing his presence. I knew what was inside the room was vampire, and I could sense that he was very old. “What happened?” I asked Lonny. “I don’t know. It was business as usual, and the workers said they found a big box made out of stone. It was there when they tore down a wall to make a room bigger. They thought they had found a secret room at first, but there were no doors. Somebody had built walls around the stone box. They went to dismantle it because we are removing the wall. It explains why my measurements haven’t been matching the blueprints. The wall was about a meter thick because there was this stone box inside. They said there was a piece of parchment on top of the box. It said ‘Fray Devil’ or something similar.” Pierre looked afraid. He said, “Could it have been Fra Diavolo?” “Yeah, I guess so,” Lonny said. “I didn’t see the paper. It must still be in the room, and I don’t think I want to go in there. Do you know what it means?” “Fra Diavolo means ‘Brother Devil’,” Pierre whispered as he shook his head. I didn’t know Pierre was afraid of anything, but his face showed complete terror. His eyes darted around like they didn’t know what to look at. Pierre didn’t have a plan on what to do, and I didn’t think

that was possible. He knew that he might have to fix this situation, but he didn’t have any ideas. “Sledgehammers did nothing to the box,” Lonny said. “The workers got a power tool to pry off the top stone.” “They tried to dismantle the box?” Pierre asked. “Yeah, I guess so. They said there was a shriveled-up corpse inside the stone, and it was wearing a silver mask.” “A what?” “A silver mask,” Lonny said. “That’s what the worker said.” “Do you have it?” “It’s still in the room.” “What was all the screaming about?” “One worker took the mask off the corpse. As soon as he did, the corpse grabbed the worker.” “A corpse grabbed the worker?” I asked. “Yeah, I got a couple of our regular human staff to go over the story to make sure we were getting good information. The workers speak German only.” “You speak German beautifully, Lonny,” Oberon said, “so that wouldn’t be a problem.” “That first worker was killed.” “Oh my God,” said Pierre. “It is Fra Diavolo, Brother Devil himself.” “If it is Fra Diavolo”—it was Queen Cécile, who had just arrived from Switzerland—“one simple silver chain won’t keep him trapped. He escaped Napoleon without the French even knowing it, so I doubt that a piece of chain would be much more than a nuisance.” The house shook when she said his name or title or whatever it was. They apparently had a history, and I don’t really think they parted on the best of terms. This corpse was trying to get out of the room. He was invigorated by the worker’s death. “He is an ancient vampire,” the queen said. “He is the one we spoke about, Mårten.” “What do you want us to do?” Pierre asked with a face of fear coming from a fearless man. “Lonny?” “Yes, ma’am?” “Please tell your security staff to expect every vampire in Europe and Africa in the next couple of minutes.” He fished his phone out of a pocket to call the security center in the back of the house. The estate’s original owner and my mentor—Menz—had been murdered, along with his lover, when a vampire was able to sneak up on him. Oberon and I had inherited the estate, and up-

dating the security system was a top priority. There is an invisible bubble over the house and grounds. If anything much larger than a bird crosses into the airspace, alarms go off. Lonny probably told the guards to take down the bubble completely for a while. The queen was right. Within about three minutes, the house was elbow-to-elbow in vampires. “What’s next?” I asked. “Next, I earn my title,” the queen said. “Everyone, I think Fra Diavolo is behind this wall.” There were some gasps. Others knew the name. It was all new to me. Several of the vampires stepped away from the doorway. They wanted to put distance between them and this Fra-whatever-he-is. “I know it is tough, but I need to you to fight. I’m going in and—” “No!” some vampires screamed. “You will be killed.” “This is my fight. It is what I need to do. If I fail, I need you to be ready to take down this vampire. No human or vampire in the world is safe so long as he walks the earth.” With that, she got one of the workers to remove the wood planks and silver chain that covered the door. She went into the room by herself. When she opened the door, all I heard was the queen say, “Bonsoir, Michele.” Michele? The powerful corpse in the room had an Italian nickname, but the queen was speaking in French. Maybe it was a private joke. She sounded pleasant, like the person inside was a neighbor or canasta partner. The queen closed the door and disappeared into the room. I heard no other words. She made no noise. I did not sense a physical fight of any kind. I expected a fight because the queen had told us she was going to do battle with this vampire. I didn’t hear a fight. I couldn’t “taste” a fight. She was in the room for three or four minutes. Every vampire in the hallway was motionless. We don’t need air, so there was no breathing. All the humans were at a safe distance. The hallway was full of vampires, but it could have been a population of stone statues. Nobody moved. Nobody made a sound. We all listened. I said a prayer for the queen’s safety. Maybe I was just worried about her, or maybe I was afraid of what we would have to do if she failed. If Pierre had no plan of action, it was certainly above my pay grade. I didn’t know this Fra Diavolo, but I was sure that he would be more than a match for every vampire in the house. Oberon and I both had pistols filled with silver-tipped ammunition. We have permits to carry the pistols, but I think the papers are forgeries. Maybe they are real, but I never signed any applications. Every few years, Oberon hands me a new permit. Maybe he keeps the papers current with the ever-changing laws. Even if the pistols are legal, I am sure that the bul-

lets break several regulations and treaties. The queen pushed aside the door of the room quietly after five minutes. The door had been resting in what was left of the doorjamb. She set the door aside, leaving a hole in the wall. The bad vampire had destroyed almost everything that was in the room, and the queen had destroyed the rest. Fra Diavolo was now just a little pile of ash on the floor. She had killed the marauding predator in the room with no noise or visible weapons. It was over quietly and quickly. “Thank you for coming, everyone,” the queen said in a charming voice. “I owe each of you, but I think everything is over.” It was over. Okay. I was expecting explosions or gunshots or knives flying through the air. I assumed that we would have a major disruption, but the queen ended the situation without any sound. There was no fight that any of us could hear or see. The queen asked Pierre and Hamlet to get all of the humans together and make their memory of the dead worker go away. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 “DID you see today’s Bild?” It was Hamlet, using mind-words. He and Pierre and the queen had gone back to Switzerland as soon as the other vampires had left. “Like I read a tabloid newspaper,” I laughed. “You should,” Hamlet said in my head. “There’s a picture of your bedroom on the front cover.” I ran to the nearest computer and went to the tabloid’s Web site. Sure enough, there was a headline—“Der Teufel Lebt” (the devil lives)—and there was a picture of a corpse kind of creature mauling a human. One of our workers had snapped a picture of the murder with his cell phone. He had sold it to the newspaper and made a fortune from it. He remembered what had happened and told the tabloid’s reporter all about the murder and where it occurred. This guy had obviously run away from the manor before the queen killed the vampire and before the other humans had their memory “adjusted.” “Friggin’ cell phone camera,” I thought. Just then, there were police cars all over the front of the house. The police took the photograph seriously. Most people who saw the paper probably thought it was a joke or a doctored picture. None of the humans at our property would remember anything, and no vampire would say anything about it. Lonny ran into the room to see what he could do to clean things up. There was little to clean. He had already disposed of the human worker’s body, and the bad vamp had swallowed all five liters of the human’s blood. The room was a mess, but there was no sign of a bloody murder. The Bundespolizei (state police) had always had green cars and green uniforms, but they’d changed to blue recently. It seemed wrong somehow. Don’t they know I don’t adapt to changes? I mean, what in Sam Hill is wrong with green? It is a perfectly good color. Mother Nature uses it all over the friggin’ place, but it just wouldn’t do for the state police. The police wanted to come inside, and we had no objection to that. Oberon took them to the room in question, and they brought cameras and cotton-swabs and plastic bags and cans of liquids to spray. They inspected and detected and measured everything. The room was becoming the most highly researched and documented room on the continent of Europe. I saw a red glob of something about the same time as one of the officers spotted it. Great: blood. If I had seen it a few seconds sooner, I could have gotten Oberon to use his vampire speed to clean it up. Now we would probably have to adjust the minds of half of Germany’s state police force, because that’s how many officers were crammed into the room. One of

their criminologists (or whatever you call them) brought a kit to do quick tests in the field. He announced that it wasn’t blood. That’s weird. Oh, wait… maybe it was vampire blood, which might not test the same. Maybe it was red paint. “Maybe you should shut the fuck up, kukhuvud,” Oberon said in my head. I guess the whole house was on edge. Oberon can curse in Swedish. A hundred years as a couple, and I am just finding this out? The police found nothing but a mess. It was obvious that parts of the house were being renovated, and fortunately Lonny had gotten all the permits. When the police drove up, someone moved the human staff to their dormitory area in the basement of the house. During the Second World War, we used the basement area to hide gays, Jews, and gypsies from the Nazis, so the entrance of the basement can be hidden from view. There were a few of our security guards and several renovation workers around, and the police wanted to speak to each one. One group of officers kept everyone from talking to each other while detectives conducted interviews. The mind adjustment worked: no human remembered the killing of that first worker or the wild vampire or the silver mask. When a vampire washes your brain, not even Germany’s finest detectives can find any cracks. If the police stayed past dawn, how were we going to explain to them that we die during the daylight? Fortunately, we didn’t have to invent a cover story for daylight death. After two hours, the detectives were satisfied that the photo was doctored. I may have put that suggestion into one policeman’s mind. No, wait. I would never do anything like that. The police turned off their flashing lights, loaded their gear, and drove away. “Drama,” Lonny said. “Spare me from drama.” “Indeed,” the queen said using real words. She was back in Bavaria. “We should talk, all of us. Is there somewhere private?” “Yes, ma’am,” Lonny said as he motioned for us to follow. He led us to his bedroom. It was the queen, Oberon, and me. When we were in Lonny’s room, he closed the door. Lonny has a separate bedroom, but he spends most of his time in the larger bedroom that Oberon and I have shared for more than a hundred years. He had already finished the renovation of his bedroom, so everything was new. It was true to the period, because he had done plenty of research, but the pieces were mostly new. The room was almost double its original size, and it was fully shielded from gamma radiation, sound, and electronic monitoring. His room was a kind of cocoon that served as the prototype for the rest of the renovation. His plans showed that each of us would get a separate room. The bedroom was about twelve by twelve meters (forty feet) square. Big. He had a large table, but it was full of drawings and

blueprints, so he guided us to a seating area consisting of a sofa and several oversized leather chairs. The queen sat in one of the chairs, and the rest of us sat nearby. “Lonny,” she said, “I don’t blame you for the publicity in the newspaper.” “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, “but it still causes trouble.” “More than you know, Lonny. More than you can imagine. Lonny, let me tell you about a very secret group of vampires. It is called the Obscurati, and the members keep all of the other vampires in check. They are the enforcers of vampire laws.” Lonny looked serious, but I’m fairly sure he already knew of the group. He might not have heard the name. “Oberon and Mårten are part of this unique group.” Lonny didn’t react. He was motionless. When any vampire tries to be motionless, we are like a friggin’ stone statue. If Lonny knew, he kept it to himself. “Relax, Lonny,” said the queen. “Yes, ma’am,” Lonny said without relaxing. “I am telling you about the Obscurati because of the murder that happened and because of one of the documents you found in a wall during your renovations.” They were connected? Holy shit. Okay, I didn’t stay motionless. This was a complete surprise to me. “I am talking about the one that is in Latin. It was an agreement to murder the pope. You have to read between the lines because it isn’t that specific, but that is what the document said. I have no idea why anybody would put such an agreement in writing, even using code words. It was a written contract to kill the pope. It implicates a cleric whose name is the same as a man who now serves as a cardinal.” “Holy shit,” I said. “A cardinal killed a pope years ago?” “I don’t know about that. I’m just saying that the document has a name that is the same as one who is a cardinal. What I do know is that there was a pope in the twentieth century who died under mysterious conditions only a few weeks into his papacy.” She waited to see if any of us had questions. I’m sure we all had questions, but we didn’t know what to ask. “There has been speculation that this pope was murdered. Books have been written about it, and the Internet is full of conspiracy theories: the Freemasons, the Vatican Bank. There are also stories that this pope was about to relax rules on celibacy and birth control, and that would have angered some members of the Roman Catholic Church. I even heard that he was going to announce that being gay was a natural expression of humanity. If that’s true, it would have made a few high-ranking officials try to keep the change from happening. I can see the

bankers doing something… I can imagine some of the bigots arranging for the pope to die… but not the Masons. It is an awful idea, but the paper found here seems to be actual documentation of an assassination.” “Wow,” Oberon said. “Wow, indeed,” she continued. “I am speculating here, but let me tell you what I think happened. The paper was signed A. Barbiconi, but I have no idea who that is. There is a small cross just after the signature, and I know that this is how priests often sign their name.” She paused to choose her words carefully. “What you all called a corpse was actually a vampire. When your worker removed the silver mask from his face, it was like releasing him from chains. The vampire attacked the worker to get to his blood. He had basically been kept in prison for several decades. When a vampire doesn’t feed on human blood, our physical bodies degrade. He was in the stone box and underneath that silver mask all this time. The vampire was alive but looked like a corpse. It was definitely the one called Fra Diavolo. He was a member of the Obscurati, and he was a lethal assassin.” “Menz?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he was….” The queen drifted off into thought. “But,” she continued, “killing any human is against our vampire laws. If Fra Diavolo took a job to murder the head of the Roman church, it was a crime against human and vampire laws. If I had known and if the evidence was conclusive, it would have meant a death sentence. I would have carried out that death sentence without any hesitation.” “Why was he here?” Oberon asked. “I haven’t a clue, but I can guess that Menz found out about what Fra Diavolo did. I cannot believe that Menz was part of the assassination because he was such a peaceful soul. It would be like Menz not to report the situation but to deal with it himself. I think Menz captured Fra Diavolo and put him into the stone box. It was like putting him in prison.” “But that’s wrong,” I said. “You bet it is,” the queen continued. “If that’s what Menz did, he was wrong to do it. He caused the death of your worker, and he tortured Fra Diavolo for decades. If Menz were still alive, I would probably kill him.” “What about this Barbiconi person?” Oberon asked. “That’s the trouble,” the queen said. “If he is still alive, he knows about this estate from the newspaper stories and that picture. Barbiconi would be old, because the case of the pope’s death happened decades ago. If we had Fra Diavolo in a kind of prison for decades, Barbiconi will assume that we have the document with his signature. I don’t know if this was a

solo act or if it was part of a group. The document hints that the contract was the work of some group as well as the cleric whose name matches the birth name of a current cardinal. There are rumors of a group in Rome called the Illuminati.” “That’s a group used in novels,” Oberon said. “Yeah, I know that such a group exists. It probably isn’t the real name, but there is a group of… some kind of supernatural beings. They work out of Rome.” “Vampire?” “No, not vampire,” the queen said. “I don’t really know what they are, but they live forever and they don’t age.” “Vampire,” I said again. “No, they are not trapped by the daylight. That’s why they call themselves the Illuminati. They think we are the work of Satan, but it isn’t just us. These guys go after anybody they think is against their church.” “Crusaders?” “Exactly, they are like the Knights Templar, only much more deadly. They are warriors, and they don’t mind killing you.” “So what can we do?” Lonny asked. The queen thought for a couple of minutes. She nodded like she had thought through a complete plan. “What I think you should do is close this manor for a while. I want you to take all your human staff to one of your other houses, leaving only the smallest crew possible behind. If Barbiconi is alive, you can assume he will come here.” Oberon, Lonny, and I were in shock. We were speechless for several minutes. The queen is not somebody who retreats, but that was what she wanted us to do. Her plan was for us to go into hiding and to stay in hiding forever. “I will stay behind,” Lonny said. “You are brave,” the queen said, “but that is an unwise idea. If it is the Illuminati, then I can’t tell you how to fight them. The rumor is they are some kind of supernatural being but not vampire. They are powerful but can move around during the day or night. Maybe they don’t even need to sleep at all.” “But Lonny is right,” Oberon said. “We can’t run. None of us can. We all have to stay here.” Hey, wait! I was willing to run. My two husbands were busy putting me in harm’s way without asking. Oberon and Lonny both had fists full of crayons, and they were coloring outside my lines.

The queen thought for a minute or two. “I should probably send Pierre and Hamlet here,” she said. “If you are staying, you will need all the fighting power you can get.” Hamlet had been part of the human staff a hundred years ago, so he knew the place, but he hadn’t lived in Bavaria for years. It would be weird for Hamlet to be back in Germany. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 “I DON’T think ‘weird’ quite covers it,” Hamlet said as we explained the situation to him and Pierre. They had both arrived just after the queen went back to Switzerland. “Did you double-check security?” Pierre asked Lonny as we all sat near the enormous fireplace in the library of the mansion. “About every couple of hours,” Lonny said. “I would love an extra set of eyes to see if I missed anything.” “Let’s go then,” Pierre said. That left Hamlet, Oberon, and me. “Just like old times,” I said. “Shall we get you updated on fighting technique?” Hamlet asked with a grin. The sissy vampire had tried to teach me karate or judo or some kind of official style. He had humiliated me on a regular basis when he lived here. The swish was able to take me down in a half second of fighting. “I have a sniper rifle,” I said, “and I know where you sleep.” Hamlet just grinned. He was very pleased with himself. “What should we do with the human staff?” Oberon asked when Pierre and Lonny reappeared. “I think they’re okay,” Pierre said. “Security is in place. Lonny’s upgrades seem state-ofthe-art. If we are attacked, the humans will have plenty of time to seek shelter. Lonny has bunkers all over the property and alarms to tell the humans to get into the nearest bunker. Very impressive.”

AND then we waited. Days became weeks. The queen found somebody named “A. Barbiconi” who had been a monsignor in the Vatican during the twentieth century, when that pope had died mysteriously. He had been promoted to bishop and then to cardinal. Arturo Barbiconi was one of the high-ranking clerics at the Vatican bank. He was powerful and had connections all over the world. Weeks became months, and I was ready to get back to work. The novelty of having Hamlet around was ground to a pulp. He loved humiliating me. Nelly friggin’ vampire. Pierre and Lonny became great friends. Pierre respected Lonny’s work with our properties, and the two of them pored over his drawings for hours.

What else was there to do? “Fuck,” Oberon said. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “There is fucking.” Oberon kept the human staff completely satisfied. If there was a bottom on the staff who wasn’t getting enough sex, it wasn’t Oberon’s fault. He and his donkey-dick were always ready. When Lonny and Pierre weren’t working on the security setup, you could find both of them with Father Johannes. The boys were showing him plans for a new balcony inside the chapel. We were buying a new organ for the Old Catholic church, and it needed a new balcony to hold the instrument. Pierre seemed impressed by how little we used as far as electricity goes. We’ve always used water from a nearby creek, but Lonny had added solar panels and a couple of huge wind turbines to the estate. Sales staff from the organ manufacturer had already visited the site and gone over the drawings. If they objected to meeting at night, they kept it to themselves. When someone spent as much money as we did, they could set the schedule without complaints. The priest grinned from ear to ear when he talked about the new instrument. He said he was looking for somebody to play his organ, and he made sure we all knew that the organ would have proper pipes with proper suction. “Were you a mail-order priest?” Lonny asked. “Son, when I became a priest, they didn’t even have mail service in Bavaria,” Father Johannes said. In addition to talks on the balcony, Lonny said that the priest was having a kind of class so that Pierre and Lonny could become Old Catholics. Oberon and Hamlet and I had grown up Roman Catholics, so I guess that was good enough to avoid having to take more classes. It was a little weird to see Lonny with a rosary, but he took the class very seriously. Rather than praying a rosary, he said that Father Johannes had them use it as a way to mark time during meditation. Lonny was a serious member of the Old Catholic Church. Who knew? For the most part, we all just relaxed. Having a crazed and immortal creature hunting us isn’t really the kind of thing that is relaxing, but we waited so many weeks that we got used to the situation. In a weird way, it all seemed normal. There were a few scares when an airplane would cross into the electronic bubble that Lonny kept over the property. He and Pierre kept the human staff in shape by running drills. They had a nurse come out to teach everyone CPR and elementary first aid. Lonny told the staff that it was just part of our new training and education. If anybody knew of the real dangers, they kept it to themselves. I went out with the sniper rifle most nights. Lonny had fenced off a clearing that was a few kilometers long to keep out humans so they didn’t get shot by accident. I kept my trigger finger in good condition.

We all talked and talked. Oberon opened up to Lonny quicker than he ever did with me. Lonny heard about how all his family and friends were killed when Dresden was attacked at the end of World War Two. Oberon told him how he had killed his own father to protect the rest of his family, and how that made him leave Dresden and change his name. He told Lonny how it was to be around Menz for so many years, and I think Lonny grew to love Menz as a kind of absentee mentor. Lonny had known Menz, but mainly as an employer. Oberon and I had lived with Menz for about ninety years. And Lonny is so much like Menz in personality and attitude. That’s probably one of the reasons I fell in love with the Texan: my own private cowboy. I really liked being able to spend an hour or two every night in bed with Oberon and Lonny. Oberon was all about making love. Lonny and I would be just as happy cuddling. I love touching his butt, even though I am basically a bottom (read: I don’t use Lonny’s butt often). Two husbands, and they both like to kiss. It was a little piece of heaven in southern Germany. After a month, Pierre started popping off to his office in Switzerland for a couple of hours each night. Oberon and I took odd sniper jobs in Europe and the Middle East. Hamlet disappeared for several hours at a stretch. He is part of the Obscurati, but nobody ever told me what he does. I’m sure it involved karate or kung fu or aikido or some kind of hand-to-hand combat, but the Obscurati don’t discuss their work. Everyone was getting cabin fever. All five of us went dancing in Munich a few times. It was weird seeing Pierre and Hamlet on the dance floor together. Yes, they are in love with each other, but Pierre was happy as a heterosexual vampire for hundreds of years. I’m told he always had one or two women with him. Maybe he was a kind of straight Oberon: oversexed and always ready. Since he met Hamlet, all that has changed. Pierre is still the scary Marine-style vampire on the outside. He just sleeps with the most effeminate vampire you can imagine. Pierre even let Hamlet get into fights. One of Hamlet’s favorite hobbies is to attract a gay basher and then beat the crap out of him. Germany has plenty of skinhead homophobes, so Hamlet had all the fighting he wanted. Pierre seemed to enjoy watching his husband take down a bully or two every time we went to Munich. It made Hamlet happy. The Munich gay scene got to be safer because Hamlet weeded out the anti-gay skinheads.

MONTHS turned into a year, and I was ready for Hamlet to be gone. We had a meeting and decided to get back to our old way of life. Oberon and I would start taking jobs that kept us away from Germany for several days at a time. Pierre and Hamlet decided to return to Switzerland. Lonny was ready to have everybody gone so he could concen-

trate on the renovations. All our houses were secure. Lonny had upgraded the security at the building in New York and on the island in the South Pacific. They all had the very latest detection equipment, and there were bunkers for everyone. He made sure that all the humans were able to go into lockdown mode at the first hint of trouble. There were drills and exercises each month. It was summer, so I suggested we go to the island, which we called Île de la Nuit (Island of the Night, but in French because it sounds cool.). We got our Airbus A330 loaded and ready to go. We took about forty humans. They were mainly blood donors and renovation workers. The blood donors were all in college, but they were on summer vacation. Nobody would miss any school, and the workers would enjoy working in the tropics for a while. Lonny had had a long runway built on our island. It is on the short side for such a large plane as the A330, but our pilots can handle themselves. They would probably get grumpy if they had to use the island runway in a storm, but it was fine when the weather cooperated. Oberon found out he liked parasailing. Who knew? We had bought a yacht that had enough oomph to let someone ski behind. Oberon went off somewhere and came back with a huge kite or parachute. Lonny and I would take turns at the controls of the yacht, while Oberon and his parachute were dragged along. He could just levitate, but he really enjoyed the slower sport. Lonny and I just enjoyed each other. I could be with either of my men and be completely happy. Lonny would work the controls standing up just so I could play with his body. I would have him stripped from the waist down in a few minutes. I once gave him a blow job that lasted over an hour, with ocean waves making the motion more interesting. When I looked up at Oberon, he had taken off his shorts and was jacking off with one hand while holding onto the parasail with the other hand. He enjoyed watching Lonny and me.

OBERON and I had all the work we wanted. We hadn’t been to the island in a year, and the local vampires all over that part of the Earth had been making lists. Most of the vampires we were paid to eliminate were in Australia. A few were in New Zealand and Indonesia. We are always paid at least €25,000 (roughly $31,000) for each kill. We are expensive, but we are only called in when the locals can’t handle the situation. In other words, we never have a simple job, and the locals never complain about the fee. We are paid considerably more if the hit is especially difficult or if the locals want to be bumped to the front of our To Do list.

It sounds cold to talk about murdering a vampire like that. It is cold, but we never kill any vampire who isn’t causing trouble. Within a few weeks, we more than paid for Lonny’s renovations on the island.

ONE kill in Indonesia took three nights. It was a complicated shot, at the upper range of the rifle’s effective range. It was in East Java, in an area of small hills. A vampire had decided he didn’t like the oil drilling that was going on nearby and started killing human workers. The local vampires couldn’t get close enough to the lair to kill him. The vegetation was too solid, and the hills just complicated things. This had to be one of my airborne shots. I think I am the only vampire sniper in history who can take somebody down from several hundred meters in the air. It is a hard shot. I basically lie flat, only there isn’t any ground below me. I am firing in the prone position, but the earth isn’t there to help hold the rifle. The bipods on the front of the rifle rest on nothing. Oberon went up and found a good spot. He took all his measurements for distance and wind speed. When I had the telescopic sight set, I floated up to the same place. We waited almost an hour before the vampire showed his sorry ass. Steady… aim… predict where he will be in three seconds… aim again… squeeze the trigger… and the vampire fell. The target didn’t burst into flames, but he fell. Weird. When I rejoined Oberon, he used sign language to tell me that I had missed. The target fell because of an earthquake. He had to spell out E-A-R-T-H-Q-U-A-K-E because neither of us knew the sign for the word. All kinds of things can happen after a bullet leaves my rifle. It is in the air for several seconds before it hits the target. This time, an earthquake had hit. I didn’t feel it because I was in the air. They all felt it on the ground. The target fell. I saw him fall, but I didn’t see him scramble into his lair. I assumed that it was a good hit when he went down. I didn’t miss by much, but a sniper can’t miss even a little. He didn’t burst into flames like he was supposed to. I was already on the ground, and the vampire was in his cave when I learned about the quake. There wasn’t going to be another shot until tomorrow. The local guide wasn’t upset. She understood that earthquakes and volcanoes are beyond my control. She offered shelter for the day, but Oberon shook his head. “Dark forty-five,” he said. They were the only words she heard either of us utter. She nodded, and we were off to our island. We barely made it before sunrise. The next night the vampire never returned or he came back to the lair so late that we wouldn’t have been able to make it back to the island before daylight. This time, we took the

guide up on her offer. She had arranged for space in the basement of a luxury hotel in Jakarta. The hotel was apparently up-to-speed on vampires, because the accommodations were more than satisfactory. Our bedroom door was solid metal, and there was a bar that we could put across it to keep out unwanted “guests” during the day. The bar made a statement that one of those “do not disturb” door hangers can’t match. At daylight Oberon and I both died, like we do every day. The first thing I remembered was him shaking me. He is always up and ready as soon as the sun goes down. I’m groggy until I get blood, which was going to be a problem, because all our donors were back on the island. The guide had thought about it, though, and we found two humans outside our door when we opened it. They didn’t know English or any of the dozen languages Oberon speaks, but they smiled and held their wrists out. It was a universal language. We fed and gave them some money. They refused the money at first, but Oberon insisted. They took the money, and we were in the air in seconds. Oberon wanted to be back at the site to get the vampire leaving his lair. We were there before the guide, thanks to Oberon and his GPS wrist unit. He made a quick visit to my sniper nest in the sky and came back with numbers for my rifle’s sight. The wind was gusting, and that makes a difficult shot almost impossible. Almost. I was tired of this assignment and wanted to get back to Lonny and the island. When I saw movement at the cave opening, I was ready. Pop! Wait… wait… wait… nothing. Grrrrrrr. I didn’t ever miss this much. Yeah, a high-angle shot is hard. Yeah, trying to hold up the rifle while levitating in the air is hard. So what? It shouldn’t have been difficult to drop this vamp, and I was tired of the whole scene. I dashed down and gave Oberon my rifle and then blasted toward the cave. The rogue vamp saw me heading for him fist-first, and he tried to jump out of my way. It didn’t work. My fist went through his body, and we both landed against the hill. Ouch. My fist hurt when it hit the rocks of the hill. I shouldn’t feel bad, because the rogue was in much worse shape. At least two of my fingers were broken, but I had enough control to pull my hand back and grab the bad vamp’s heart on my way out of his chest cavity. My fingers were repairing themselves before the vampire slumped to the ground. I pulled out the cigarette lighter that I always carry in a pocket and lit the vampire. When he started sizzling, I flashed back to Oberon’s position. He knew enough not to say anything. An angry guy with Viking blood is a whole different kind of angry. Yeah, I have anger issues sometimes. So what? I mean, friggin’ deal with it.

By the time the guide arrived, we were packing our gear. She was pleased and tried to give Oberon extra money because it took three days. We both shook our heads. She just nodded her head, almost like a small bow you sometimes see in Japan. I left while Oberon took the guide’s gold. We met up over the Timor Sea and headed back to our island. Oberon held my hand as we flew, which always makes me happy.

LONNY said one of his projects in the New York building needed some hands-on attention. He was about to call for the Gulfstream, but we all decided that going to New York City would be fun. Most of the staff agreed, so we got the pilots sober enough to fly the Airbus. The jet can actually make it from the island to New York without stopping for fuel, but that assumes we leave with full tanks. We had to land in French Polynesia to fill up the Airbus’s tanks. The pilots always try to buy extra jet fuel, because we sometimes change our itinerary in mid-flight. The airport at Nuku-Hiva is small, but we weren’t staying. We got fuel and enough supplies to keep the humans fed and happy for a long flight. It would take two flight crews, but we always had three on the Airbus. I’m sure the flight was boring for some, but there were no sniper jobs and no renovation projects. I got several hours alone with Lonny and Oberon. We spent most of the time in bed. We cuddled and kissed. Oberon fucked both of us. I let Lonny top me, which got Oberon hot and ready for more. When Lonny was finished, Oberon mounted me for a second time. My poor ass was mincemeat, but I loved it. Nobody was in charge or playing the alpha. We were vampires, but we weren’t territorial with each other. Oberon sincerely loved Lonny, something I had worried about when we first let him into our relationship. Lonny loved both of us. As Oberon made love to me, Lonny was cuddling with me and playing with Oberon’s long hair. He rubbed my nipples with the hair, and then he leaned in to nibble on Oberon’s tits. Oberon took his time on his second trip into my hole. He was enjoying himself. I’m not sure I would have survived one of his hot-and-furious fucks. In a way, the slow lovemaking reminded me of the way things were a hundred years ago. Oberon and I could make love for hours. Sometimes we would do it in bed or levitating somewhere in the bedroom. Other times we would go outside and float above the clouds. We haven’t done that in years, and I miss it. It is probably because Lonny can’t levitate. Oberon’s second lovemaking ended quietly. He often explodes into my ass with groans or deep and throaty grunts. He just hummed as he added more juice to my collection. He wasn’t in a hurry to pull out. Instead, he just relaxed on top of me. All three of us held each other,

and that is how we spent the entire day.

WHEN I awoke for the night, Oberon’s limp tool was still in my ass. He was slowly getting hard again. Without removing himself, Oberon made love to me again. It felt good. The jet engines were off, so we had landed at Teterboro in New Jersey. Lonny jacked me off as Oberon fucked me. It was all over in a minute. Just a quickie to start the night. When we opened the door, most of the humans had already left. They had hired a couple of buses to get them from New Jersey to our building in Manhattan. Three blood donors stayed behind so we could feed. A vampire feeding is a careful process. I sink my fangs into the blood donor’s wrist. It doesn’t hurt. In fact, the human enjoys the sensation. There is something in a vampire’s saliva that tricks the human brain. I don’t have to bite because my fangs are sharp enough to glide into the arm. When the blood starts to flow, I count to twenty and then put my tongue over the two wounds. In a second or two, my saliva has sealed the wound. I lick the donor’s arm to clean off any remaining blood. Within a few hours, the fang-wounds are completely healed. When I take blood from another vampire, the healing is complete within seconds. Vampires always heal with amazing speed. I do take blood from Oberon and Lonny sometimes. It is really sensual for both of us, but it isn’t food. A vampire has to drink non-vampire blood. Human blood is best, but animal blood will do in an emergency. As soon as I swallow the blood, I get a rush of sensation as little machines in my body attack the human blood and convert it to vampire blood. When we were finished, I spotted a limousine near the jet. It was waiting to take Lonny and the three humans to New York City. Oberon and I would be there in seconds. Flying is handy. We carried our ammo and rifle bags. They don’t leave our presence. I’m sure the limo would have been fine for transporting our weapons and computers, but it just isn’t something we would ever do. We were inbound from the South Pacific, so that meant customs. I can’t imagine Lonny explaining why he had a stash of bullets made from depleted uranium. I always think that the jet will still make immigration equipment go crazy just from having carried depleted uranium in the past. Doesn’t radioactivity stick around for a while (like, I don’t know, fifty thousand years)? Even if border guards didn’t confiscate the hardware, the police might stop the car for speeding. The driver would have a hard time explaining the presence of an ultra-long-range sniper rifle and a bag full of RSA (really scary ammunition) in the trunk. Oberon and I make

the trip from Teterboro to the roof of our Manhattan building in about two seconds, and that is only because Oberon slows down so he can fly beside me. If he made the trip alone, it wouldn’t even last a second. I have no idea how he does it. Our building is fairly tall, and we own the entire thing. The floors are arranged similarly to a layout used by Queen Cécile at her building in Switzerland. We designated half of the floors for use by humans. Every other floor is set up as either an office or apartments. The human floors are numbered 1, 2, 3, and so forth. It isn’t obvious from the numbering or from the building’s outside appearance that there are hidden floors in the building. The vampire-only floors are only accessible by a special lift (elevator). It really is just a shaft that is protected by a biometric device. The entrance of the shaft looks like a regular lift door. It opens only if you type your own special code into a keypad and then let a scanner read your retina. Once the computer is satisfied, the vampire-only lift doors open with a pleasant ding. Lonny added the ding, and I expect the queen would be jealous, because her building doesn’t ding. When the vampire-only door opens, it looks like a lift. Oberon and I step into the lift and the door closes. Instead of taking us up, the top of the cage moves away. With the door closed to human eyes, our empty shaft is revealed. We float up to whatever floor we want and use a second biometric device to open the door into a vampire-only floor. Lonny had to put one of the biometric boxes in the human lift. He can’t float or fly. He can jump several stories, but he would be slammed back to ground as soon as he was at the top of his jump. Jumping is an inexact art, so getting up to a certain floor would be tricky. I guess he could have put little landing platforms in front of each vampire door. Maybe I will suggest that to him. He uses a biometric device in the lift cab that takes him to any of the vampire floors. It is like floor eight and a half. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 THERE is something about Las Vegas that seems to attract crazed vampires. I know, why should vamps be any different? Lonny even suggested we move our American operation there, because Nevada had lots more business than the rest of the country combined. I think Lonny just wanted to be close to poker tables. He had already been asked to leave one casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey because he almost took down the house. They had even sent the message using some goons in black suits. I suppose that was supposed to be intimidating. Lonny thought it was funny, which made the goons tense. Humans can’t really intimidate vampires. “This is so sad,” Lonny had told them. He didn’t want to cause real trouble, so he left. It cost that casino quite a bit of money in the long run, because we told everybody to avoid patronizing them. It was all unofficial, and the casino really didn’t have good grounds to ban Lonny except that he was beating their asses at Texas Hold ’em. We were after a vampire in Nevada. It was Lake Mead again, or close to it. The vampire was in a natural cave near Hoover Dam. He thought it would be impossible for the Obscurati to get the drop on him. He even bragged about that to one of the local vampires, which was how they were able to locate his lair quickly when he started a killing spree. He was correct in thinking he was safe from the local vampires, but he was wrong if he thought he was safe from me. There was no place for me to fire in the prone position. I found a place to sit, and there was a rock to rest the rifle against. Yeah, the shot was “impossible.” I almost didn’t need Oberon’s computer skills. Short shot. Not a problem. Pop… whiz… sizzle. The vampire population went down by one. I grabbed the rifle and shot up into the air like always, and I was somewhere over eastern Utah when Oberon caught up. He got in front of me and signaled for me to stop. “What’s up?” I asked. “California.” “No, I asked what is up, and California is technically down from where we are,” I said. “Bite me.” “You always know a way into a vampire’s heart.” “The locals in Los Angeles are on our list, but I thought we could just make a night of it.” “Fine.” He had handed me his duffel while we levitated above Utah, and he dug a cell phone out of his pants pocket. Oberon wanted to check in with the Los Angeles vampires to

see if they could handle our visit tonight. We would need shelter because the extra distance would make it impossible to get back to New York before dawn. No bars. Oberon’s phone said it was searching for service. I’ve had days like that. Oberon started out toward California, and I followed. It wasn’t pretty with me carrying all the equipment, but I didn’t drop anything. I don’t think that I dropped anything. Bumfuck, Utah. No service. We were back over Las Vegas when Oberon’s cell phone finally noticed there was a whole world out there. He talked briefly with the vampires in Los Angeles. “They have a couple of jobs,” he told me. “Jobs” is a really sterile word to use for murders and executions. “They’re happy we are coming.” He punched coordinates into his wrist-mounted GPS unit. “Do we have enough ammunition for more than one job?” I asked. “Don’t miss too many shots, but yeah.” “Me? Miss? I am the deadly vampire assassin, you devilish fiend. I don’t miss.” “Yeah, whatever,” he said, and then he used mind-words to tell Lonny not to wait up for us. Like he could if he wanted, but he wouldn’t worry about us if he knew we wouldn’t return until tomorrow night. We were over our coordinates in about a minute. The first kill was a vampire whose lair was in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the city of Los Angeles. Smog and city lights made the air glow. We needed to get down on the ground quickly to avoid being seen by the bad guy. Oops. Too late. “You see that?” I asked. “Yup,” Oberon said. “I guess we don’t get to kill that one tonight. I’ll get coordinates for the other.” We landed on the ground and met the guide. He had seen what had happened up in the air, and he knew the bad vamp was spooked. The guide gave Oberon coordinates for his GPS unit, and we headed north. We flew as low as possible, which almost got me killed once or twice. I was almost sliced into two little vampire pieces by an electrical line, and I came close to slamming into a police helicopter while I was recovering from the electrical line. “I’m okay,” I told Oberon, “but thanks for asking.” He just grinned. He could have gone up a couple of feet without endangering the mission. I would have felt safer, but I did my best to keep up with his speed. The second kill was to be in a wooded area just inland from Ojai, California. We were north of Los Angeles. The guide for this second shot pointed to a cabin way in the distance. Of course, she failed to give me a straight-line shot from a convenient position. These bad vamps are so self-centered. They could show some consideration to their killer.

I wasn’t sure how to make the shot. I even closed one eye, like that would open a vista. Best guess: I needed a bullet capable of swerving around a dozen or so trees. “I see the cabin,” I whispered into Oberon’s ear, “but I don’t think the shot will be reliable. Can we get closer?” He gave me the sign for walk. Our sign language was fairly standard, but we were developing a kind of code that only we would understand. Oberon says it is only a matter of time before somebody publishes Obscurati hand-signal codes on the Internet. We walked, staying the same distance from the cabin. After a hundred meters, I saw that I had a shot. It was a pathway leading to the cabin. If the vampire walked, we were set. If he could fly, we would be naught-for-two. “You watch behind,” Oberon told the guide. We don’t like talking to our guide, but sometimes the situation requires it. She was happy to help and went to take a position a few meters behind us. Oberon got all the numbers, and I adjusted the rifle. Just as I was settling into my prone position, she attacked. She attacked! Mother…. Skit. The friggin’ guide was our target. Damn, these vampires are sneaky. “Attack!” I said aloud, and Oberon picked up his pistol just as the female vampire attacked him. I dropped the sniper rifle to join the fight. Oberon is smart, but he isn’t a fighter. There was a vampire attacking the love of my life. I had visions of Menz being murdered by another vampire, and I instantly went into berserker Viking mode. When you get a Viking worked up, he goes absolutely nuts until the fight is finished. In a half a second, I had pulled her off my husband. She decided that I was more of a threat, so she broke off her attack on Oberon. He was wounded badly. Skit. Skit. Oberon was down. “Don’t you fucking die on me, man,” I screamed at him. Okay, now I was angry. No, furious. My mother would be scolding me for cursing in Swedish, but I didn’t have the time to come up with any nice words. “Obscurati down near Ojai,” I screamed in my mind. It was a kind of Red Alert for any vampire tuned into mind-words. I had never used this kind of cry for help, not in a hundred years. I’d seen others do it, but I wasn’t sure if I needed a special code. Skit. Skit. I didn’t merely fly into her. I jumped with all my power, moving fist-first. She dodged me and grabbed my arm to fling me into a tree. She was strong, and she moved as fast as anybody I’ve seen. Skit. I grabbed back. She had my arm, but I had her hair. With a fist full of auburn hair and parts of one ear, I pulled as fast and as hard as I could. Her head came off, spurting blood

over everything. Her hair seemed really red until it was next to the red of her blood. I grabbed her body and raced it over to Oberon. There was blood. It wasn’t as good as human or animal blood, but it would help close up Oberon’s wounds. He got a mouthful before her body stopped spewing blood. I flung her body away and did a damage assessment. The area was starting to fill up. My brothers and sisters had heard my screams. Oberon was missing a finger on his left hand. I popped away and used my tracking ability to find the finger. Within a few seconds I was back with the finger and held it onto his hand. Oberon’s body got busy reattaching the finger. He had lost a lot of blood, but I felt he would heal. One of the local vampires had a plastic bottle full of blood. He had responded to the ruckus and came with supplies. If I had to guess, I would say he was probably Obscurati. I didn’t have to guess. I didn’t have to know. He was feeding Oberon from the bottle while another vampire was checking for more injuries. He’d better stop feeling up my husband unless he wants Oberon to get horny. I laughed because it was the only thing keeping me from crying. Oberon had lost the small mask that we both wear to killings. I would come back for it some other time. My husband was more important than a stupid mask, even if it had been made by Lonny. One local vampire said the female had killed our guide and was waiting to ambush us. They apparently had already lost a dozen vampire warriors trying to get her under control. He was surprised that we were able to take care of the situation by ourselves. Fucking ambush. “Skit,” I said under my breath. “Svenska?” the guy asked. I didn’t respond, even though I knew he was asking if I was Swedish. For now I was composed enough to remember that Obscurati don’t talk about personal stuff. He must not be Obscurati, or he would know not to ask. Another vampire went to gather our equipment as Oberon reached up with his good hand to wipe the tears off my face. I smiled just before another round of tears came up. I was trying to think if there was anything in the equipment or bags that the locals shouldn’t see. Fuck it: Oberon was more important. I’d worry about vampire rules later. “Don’t you die on me, you son of a bitch,” I said. “I’m not through with you yet.” “I’m okay,” he said just as he passed out. Two more locals landed nearby and wanted to help carry Oberon. I thanked them but said I could carry him. “He needs a doctor,” I said. They agreed and took us to a vampire doctor somewhere outside of Oxnard, whatever the hell that is.

“You carry, or should we?” “I’ve got him, but could you bring our duffel bags?” “Sure,” one said as I put a strap around my unconscious lover. “Oberon?” I said into his ear. “I’m here, Mr. Man. I’m right here. We’re taking you to a doctor.” He didn’t respond, and that made me cry even more. One of the locals reached out and squeezed my upper arm. He pointed upwards and then flashed into the sky. I followed, moving slower than usual. I didn’t want the wind to hurt Oberon. God, this cannot be happening. Not to Oberon. Not to the man I… I mean…. We landed in the parking lot of an unmarked building. A man in a white lab coat was waiting for us at the main door. It was a vampire doctor, and the locals had told him to expect an injured vampire. One of the local vampires held the door open as the doctor led the way to an examination room. I kept Oberon on my back until we were in the room, and I put Oberon on the table in the middle of the room. The doctor ordered everyone out of the room. I gave him a look that told him I wasn’t in the mood to leave and it wasn’t subject to discussion. I stayed against a wall while he worked to save Oberon. Using an ultrasound, he found that a couple of Oberon’s veins were shattered. Oberon was bleeding out internally, and his body was confused on how to repair the damage. The doctor had to work quickly, or Oberon’s vampire blood might put him back together in a way that wouldn’t work. The doctor dropped the ultrasound device and picked up a scalpel. He sliced into Oberon’s leg and put some kind of rubber or plastic tube around a vein that was leaking. He did the same thing to a place in Oberon’s side. As soon as the doctor had the tube in place, the slice started healing itself. He got his ultrasound device working again but couldn’t find any more leaks. The doctor went to the door of the operating room and said something to one of his assistants. In just a moment, two humans walked in. They were going to feed Oberon. The doctor’s fangs pierced one of the human’s wrists while the other human held Oberon’s mouth open. When his mouth was full, the doctor closed the human’s wound with his own tongue and saliva. The first human left the room, and the second took a few steps back. The blood slowly drained into my lover. It took forever, but all of a sudden Oberon gasped and his back arched. He was awake and hungry. Oberon grabbed the other human’s wrist. The doctor and I kept him from tearing off the poor guy’s arm. Oberon wasn’t thinking clearly. His body was telling him, no, ordering him to feed. Oberon would have killed the human without knowing it. When Oberon was finished feeding, I took the human’s wrist and closed the wound with my tongue. Yes, I also took a mouthful of his blood. I shouldn’t have, but I needed to feed.

The human probably didn’t even know that I had taken any of his blood. The doctor was busy wiping Oberon’s wounds to make sure everything was in place. To make sure he didn’t miss anything, he sent Oberon to an MRI device in the same building. It gave him a picture of Oberon’s entire body. His left arm and right leg showed that they had been broken. After the MRI, the doctor gave Oberon a glass of tequila to dull the pain. The doctor had to re-break both the leg and arm, and I know it hurt like… well, it hurt. Unfortunately, vampires can’t receive painkillers or anesthesia. That isn’t completely true—you can fill us up with enough dope to kill every human in a large city without doing anything to us. It will only annoy the vampire. Liquor works briefly. The doctor had plenty of tequila and gave Oberon a glass before each re-break. It helped, but Oberon wasn’t pleased to be there. Within an hour, Oberon was healed enough to go. We stayed in the basement of the doctor’s medical building for the day. In addition to being a vampire hospital, the building served as the doctor’s lair. He made a room available to us. Maybe he did that for all his patients, but I thought it was a nice gesture. The local vampires paid us a million dollars for the job. That’s about €800,000. It was the single biggest payment we’d ever received. In a way, I think we were working cheap. I came close to losing Oberon. The next night I went back to Ojai to find Oberon’s mask. It didn’t take long, because the mask smelled like my husband, and that is simple for me to track. I also found what was left of his Sahara tablet PC. Hopefully he had it backed up. He probably had an extended warranty. I really wanted to see him explain that he needed a replacement because it had been shredded during a vampire attack. I wanted pictures of that one. Lonny came out in the Gulfstream. He must have sensed my initial call for help and left immediately. He was there to carry Oberon back to New York whenever he was ready to go. Oberon could have flown without a jet, but Lonny showed us that he has a real stubborn edge. Good to know. We got Oberon to an airport in Long Beach. It was quite a drive, and I’m sure there were closer airports. Lonny was running the show, and we let him. As soon as we got Oberon onto the bed in the back of the Gulfstream, I heard the jet engines start. Lonny crawled onto one side of Oberon. I was on the other side. We didn’t move until we landed in New Jersey. It was almost dawn, so the three of us spent the day on the jet.

DOWNTIME. I insisted and didn’t give Oberon or Lonny the option of disagreeing. Neither did. We spent a week in our building, doing almost nothing, except for a couple of trips to see Broadway shows. Lonny got us blocks of tickets somehow. Both shows seemed sold out, but

Lonny was able to find tickets for the three of us and about a dozen humans. He is like a cunning concierge. Whatever we need, he always seems to find. I get curious sometimes, but we all know what that did to the cat. I don’t take any chances with curiosity. We were walking through Times Square after one of the shows when I felt a little sting on my neck. It was a tranquilizer dart somebody had fired at me. Don’t these people know that tranquilizer darts have no effect on a vampire? Oy. Lonny insisted on taking the dart to a chemist, who reported that it wasn’t full of a tranquilizer. It was ricin, a poison made from castor beans that is always fatal to humans. Once a human gets hit with a dose of ricin half the size of one grain of sand, you might as well start planning the funeral. Nobody seemed to know what effect it would have on a vampire, but I didn’t feel the need to worry. It would either kill me or not, and there was nothing that could be done. I felt okay because I could feel my vampire blood attack the chemical as soon as it hit. Vampire blood takes out almost everything other than radiation. Why would anybody try to poison me? A vampire would know that something like ricin would not be the best way. Ricin? Skit. Lonny had contacts in the New York police department, and he was able to get security camera footage from all the cameras around Times Square. He spotted us walking and zeroed in on the moment of impact. Lonny was able to backtrack the dart to a van. Tennessee license plate. Fuck me blind. I didn’t even need to hear the town: Smithville. What is it with Tennessee? They were about to piss me off. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 “SHOULD we just get targets drawn on our backs?” I asked Oberon. “Ink doesn’t last on a vampire,” Lonny said before he knew I was trying to make light of our situation. “But I could get one of my engineers on it to see if there is any kind of stain that will last.” “No, that’s okay,” Oberon laughed. A buzzer made me jump. I almost cracked my neck on the ceiling. When a vampire jumps, it is usually fast. In my case, the buzzer startled me, and I reacted by clawing the ceiling. At least I was a source of amusement to Oberon. Lonny picked up the phone. “Great, I will come down… no, wait, could you give him an access code?” Lonny mouthed the word “Pierre.” “Just tell him it is the same system as he has in Switzerland, and we are on floor J.” Pierre was here. Unannounced: it must be serious. Of course it is serious. Somebody almost killed Oberon and tried to poison me with a dart. “Ding,” the lift door said as it opened. “Ricin? Really?” Pierre said as he walked into the room. “Couldn’t you do better than ricin?” “It was the best I could do without advance notice,” I said. “Anyway, I couldn’t just hang around while Oberon got all the attention.” “How’s your finger?” Pierre asked. “Just like new,” Oberon said. “They have a good VD in LA.” “VDLA?” Pierre laughed. “Did I just land in a bowl of alphabet pasta? Venereal disease?” “Vampire doctor,” Lonny said. “You really need to get out more,” I added. “It was a vampire doctor in Los Angeles: VD in LA.” “Any leads on the ricin?” “Yeah,” Lonny said, and he handed him a computer printout on the van that fired the shot. “Did the license plate tell you anything?” “It got us an address in Tennessee,” I said, and Pierre looked puzzled. “That’s a state about 1,500 kilometers west-southwest of Manhattan.” Pierre nodded. “Stolen,” I added. “The license plates were stolen, so it was kind of a dead-end. The strange thing is that there were some human killings going on near where the plates were

stolen. The king of the Americas made a special trip there to meet us. He couldn’t kill the vampire responsible because they never could figure out what vampire was responsible. He was puzzled, and I was too. You know I can track vampires… well, I got nothing. The body I saw had three wounds, but the spread between each hole was different on each wound. The really weird part was that the wounds were almost perfect. No ripping, no tearing.” “So, not a vampire?” “That’s my theory. It was somebody who wanted everyone to think it was vampire, but there’s no evidence of an actual vampire.” Pierre tried to get his head wrapped around all the facts. It wasn’t working for him. He knew as much as the rest of us, which was absolutely nothing. “Vampires are the work of fiction writers,” he said. “Nobody would see holes in a human body and think they were caused by a fictional creature.” “The body was drained of blood,” Oberon said. “Five liters? No, not even three large vampires could do that. Was there blood on the ground?” “I didn’t see any,” I said, and Oberon confirmed that he didn’t see any. “Maybe the human was killed somewhere else and the body just ended up… where?” “Outside Smithville, Tennessee,” I continued. “You have to intend to go there. It is a Podunk spot on a minor highway. The only thing Smithville is known for is that a couple of country-and-Western singers used to live there.” “Sounds riveting,” Pierre said. “So a body turns up there, and somehow King Nopaltzin finds out about it. Do we know how he knew about the body?” “Local vampires,” Oberon said. “There’s a nice population of vamps in the woods around there.” “I could sense every vampire we met there,” I said, “so I’m fairly sure that none of them killed the human unless they were completely wrapped in plastic….” “Or there is another vampire out there.” “Right,” I said, “but don’t forget that we found no smell or sensation of a vampire being there. And then the wounds were too perfect for three vampires on a tirade.” “What brings you to town?” Lonny asked. “I heard rumors that you had copied Queen Cécile’s building security, and I had to come order you to remove everything… copyright infringement.” “Ours goes ding when the door opens,” Lonny said. “It proves we didn’t copy it, but we might be willing to share our ding with you for a reasonable price.” “I like this guy,” Pierre said. “How’d you ever get tangled up with these two?”

“They’re really good in bed,” Lonny said. “Somehow I knew that I shouldn’t have asked. Okay, there’s rumblings all over Europe about some kind of hit put out on all three of you.” “Obscurati?” I asked. “I don’t think so,” Pierre said. “Let’s hope not, because almost every Obscurati in the world will be here tomorrow. The call has gone out, and we’re closing ranks to protect the three of you.” “Hamlet?” “He’ll be here, but he’s all stressed out that he has nothing to wear to New York.” “Such a queen,” I laughed. “I heard that,” Queen Cécile said in my mind. “Being a queen is my territory.” “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Your Majesty.” The queen was still in Bern, but she could listen to everything we said inside our building in New York City. Scary. Lonny got up and walked over to his laptop computer, which was set up on a desk. He started typing. “What’s going on?” I asked. “I’m closing down the island house and the one in Bavaria, and I’m bringing all our human staff members here. Okay, the Airbus will be going to Bavaria in an hour… and the Gulfstream will be going to the island… uh… sometime.” I guess I looked puzzled. “Food… guests,” Lonny said. “Keeping anybody in Germany?” Oberon asked. “Yes,” Lonny said. “Don’t worry about the farm, dear. The hops and animals keep their entire crew. Everything that needs picking will get picked. Everybody that needs milking will get their tits fondled by expert fingers, and everybody who is supposed to lay things will have plenty of nesting space.” Oberon relaxed, but Pierre looked confused. “Farmer lingo,” I volunteered. “Whoa, wait,” Pierre insisted. “Lonny, I appreciate your work, but I’m not sure this will work.” “Okay,” Lonny said. “What do you want?” “The Obscurati are all secretive. They don’t know each other. I don’t know them. Nobody knows their identities, but it sounds like you are going to be putting everyone here in a big dormitory or bunkhouse.”

Lonny thought for a minute or two. “I can make this happen. How many are there?” “Maybe three hundred or so.” “How many jobs or projects will you have for them?” It was Pierre’s time to think. “First is protecting the three of you,” he said. “Second is figuring out what the hell is happening in Smithburg.” “Smithville,” I said. “Bum-fuck City,” Pierre said. “Third is to do some detective work and find out who put the order out to have you guys killed. Fourth… I have no idea, but something will come up.” “And you don’t know these vampires.” “Right, and they don’t even want me to know them. They are anonymous today, and they want to be that way next week.” “What languages will they speak?” “Most are okay with English these days. Add French, Chinese, and Russian, and you will have everything covered. I think everyone will know one of those languages.” Lonny played with a pencil. He tapped it on the desk while he stared at the screen of his notebook computer. “Hmmm,” he hummed. “I can do this.” “This I have to see,” Pierre said. “I will not only do it, but we will keep all of us anonymous.” Lonny knocked on the top of the desk and stood up. “First, we put the building in lockdown. That will bring daylight and radiation shields onto every floor. We have fourteen floors. If we reserve one floor for the humans, this floor for us, and the lobby for obvious reasons, that still leaves eleven usable floors. Okay, watch. I take down three sets—no, four sets of instructions for our visitors. I can get the instructions into all those languages with Google Translate, with an apology that the translation is probably not exact. Then we give our security staff in the lobby all the letters. We have one security staffer on the main lift. Each envelope has a number that tells the lift person what floor.” “I am liking this,” Pierre grinned. “Nobody has to know anyone’s name. Nobody has to see anybody else. What if they have a question?” “We have a full telephone system. I will get an extension to call for questions,” Lonny said. “Oh, and it is probably best if we keep the lobby guards rotated every hour or so. Nobody should be allowed to see too many Obscurati.” “Okay, and the packet of papers gives each one an assignment. It explains some of the steps we are taking to assure their privacy….” “But we also need to say we are keeping some of the security and privacy measures confidential and not on paper.”

“Sweet,” Pierre said. “They’ll like that. The packet can tell them something about the accommodations and a number to call to ask for a blood donor. Lonny, you are amazing.” “Keep your paws off my husband,” Oberon said. “I’m happily married to Hamlet.” “And that, my friends, is something I can’t fix,” Lonny said. “That is a hopeless situation.” Chapter 10

Chapter 10 LONNY and Pierre stayed busy for hours at the computer. They worked out instructions and protocols for the Obscurati. Nothing like a mass gathering had ever been tried, and Lonny had come up with a way to do it while protecting almost every individual’s anonymity. I was impressed, and Pierre seemed to be more than pleased. Just before dawn, the computer’s wireless printer spun to life. Lonny made sure it had plenty of paper to handle all four notices, each in all four languages, and both he and Pierre joined us at the sofa. Oberon gave Lonny a round of applause. “Shhhh,” I warned. “He’ll be asking for a raise.” “Bed?” Pierre asked. I pointed at the sofa we were sitting on. Pierre looked stern, but Oberon and I stood up and got the sleeper sofa converted into a queen-size bed. I started to make a crack about the size of the bed being “queen”-size. “Don’t go there,” Queen Cécile said in my head. “No, ma’am,” I thought. Once Pierre was settled and reasonably happy with his bed, Oberon, Lonny, and I walked over to the big bed at the far side of the room. When I say “room,” you have to remember that the entire floor was one room. The bed was way off in the distance from where Pierre would die for the day.

THE next night when my eyes popped open, Oberon and Pierre were at the table, folding papers. Lonny was stuffing papers into envelopes, sealing them, and writing his code on each one. I wish that I could tell you that I got up to help, but I didn’t. Seeing them was the last thing I remembered. When I woke up again, I was in bed, but not our big bed. Somehow they had taken me all the way to the vampire doctor in Oxnard. I was in a hospital bed but without all the wires and tubes that humans get. I felt cheated: it was just me and the bed. Oberon and Lonny were both in the room. As soon as I stirred, Oberon sprang to the bed. Lonny went to the door and called out that I was awake. The doctor came in with a couple of humans dressed in whatever they call hospital attire. “Nurse drag” or something. One of the humans offered me her wrist, and I fed. The blood tasted awful. The next thing I knew, I was in bed in the New York City building. Was Oxnard a dream?

“Ricin,” Pierre said. “We thought we lost you.” I looked at him but didn’t try to speak. “You had a delayed reaction to the ricin dart, so we took you to California.” Oxnard hadn’t been a dream. I found out later that Oberon had me strapped to his back as he raced at top speed from New York to California. They said I was between two sheets of plastic, a kind of cocoon to keep me from falling apart from the wind. Maybe I could try that again someday when I can remember it. “The doctor there had the reputation of being the best vampire doctor in the country.” It was King Nopaltzin, in person. “But it turns out that he was working for whoever is trying to kill us,” Oberon said. “You were hurt, and the doctor brought in a blood donor who was dying of hepatitis C.” “Let’s just say that the doctor won’t be seeing any more patients.” It was Hamlet. They had sent me to the same doctor that patched up Oberon. He was the one who had wanted to be alone with Oberon. It was a good thing that I refused to leave the room, because the doctor was one of the bad guys. If I had left him alone with Oberon, I think the doctor would have killed my lover. “How’d you get here so fast?” I asked Hamlet using mind-words. “You’ve been out for more than a week, precious,” Hamlet said. “Goddamn doctor was one of the people trying to kill us?” “Yeah,” Lonny said. Can’t breathe. Vampires don’t have to breathe, so that’s okay. Mouth has… oh, mouth is full of blood. The blood was draining into my throat, and then came the rush when vampire blood attacks human blood. I felt my body come alive, and I gasped and lifted off the bed. Hungry. I need human blood, and I need it now. Wrist! The next thing I knew, Pierre and Lonny were pulling me off some poor human that I had attacked. I recognized him as one of our regulars from Bavaria. They let me take as much blood as I wanted, but I needed to remember not to hurt the human. As soon as my fangs pulled out of the human’s arm, Oberon was there to seal the wound with his saliva. They were holding me back. I think I probably sprang out of the bed and made a beeline for the human. Oops. Once all the humans were at a safe distance (read: out of the room), Pierre and Lonny relaxed their grip and got me back to bed. Apologize, I thought. I need to…. “Consider it done, son. You do know how to cause drama,” Queen Cécile said using regular words. She was in the room. I looked around, and it was our bedroom in New York City.

Lonny and Oberon hugged me gently. “You’ve been in a coma for two weeks,” Pierre said. “Ricin?” I whispered. My voice was hoarse, and my mouth felt like it was full of cotton laced with metal filings. “Ricin is what everyone thinks. Nobody ever tried using ricin on a vampire. I guess we know that it isn’t as deadly to vampires as to humans, but there is some effect. Ricin can take one of us out of action for weeks,” Pierre said. “See,” Hamlet said, “you are useful. You expanded the knowledge base of vampires everywhere. Now there is a new weapon to use against us, thank you so much.” I gave him a one-finger salute. “Are they always so malicious to each other?” King Nopaltzin asked. “They have a history,” the queen whispered. “It’s harmless banter. I think they secretly love each other.” I started to give the queen the same salute, but Pierre grabbed my arm. The queen was always giving me shit about being able to tap into my head. Here I could slap back at Her Majesty, and she couldn’t see it, but Pierre kept me from sending a one-finger salute to her. “I can hear you,” I told her using mind-words. Pierre told me that the Obscurati had covered all of Tennessee and Kentucky looking for whatever was killing humans. They found nothing that was vampire. He was guessing that the deaths were just a way to get the vampires to respond. I was groggy but awake. The ricin attack took me down for three or four weeks. For most of that time, I faded in and out of consciousness. The Obscurati had failed on every one of their projects. They didn’t find out who was responsible for killing the humans in Tennessee; they didn’t protect us; and they weren’t able to identify who was trying to kill us. Oh-for-three. Dizzy. I sat up but wasn’t sure I could stand without falling over or…. Pierre, Hamlet, Oberon, and Lonny were talking across the room. I stood up and almost went over backward. “Careful,” Oberon said as he saw what I was doing and started walking to the bed. “Clothes,” I said. I wanted to be out of my clothes and into some fresh ones. I had been in the same clothes forever. Lonny jumped up and got me a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I pulled off my dirty shirt and started emptying the pockets of my pants. Rings: I always carry several sizes of rings in my pocket because I like to wear lots of rings. My fingers change size depending on the temperature or weather, and so I always have rings to fit whatever size is needed.

Credit card receipts. I wadded them up to…. Wait. One piece of paper wasn’t a receipt. Who-the-fuck-knows what it…. I was too groggy to care, so I handed it to Oberon. If the paper was important, he…. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said as he held up the paper. Pierre was there in a flash. “Non si può nascondere da Dio,” Pierre read. “And it is signed ++Arturo Barbiconi.” “It means that you can’t hide from God,” Lonny said. It is great having people with all these language talents. “Where was it?” Pierre asked. I was too groggy to answer, but I could sit back on the bed and hold up the pants I just took off. Ordinarily I would usually be embarrassed to be nude in front of somebody like Pierre, but I just didn’t give a flying fuck about it. “I dressed him about three days ago,” Oberon said. “Remember, Lonny? We both gave him a bath on the bed?” “Yeah, and the pants were clean,” Lonny said. “That piece of paper has not been through any laundry, and Mårten hasn’t been out of this room.” “Is that the guy who signed…,” Oberon started to ask but stopped. “It’s okay,” Pierre said. “Everyone in the room knows about the document. It must be. Barbiconi is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church and has something to do with the Vatican Bank.” “And he was here?” Lonny asked like somebody was supposed to have an answer. “Nobody can get through security and into this room. Mårten is protected better than the Mona Lisa or the gold at Fort Knox.” “Two plus signs in front of the name,” Oberon said. “The queen said the other had one plus sign after the name. One versus two? Before versus after?” “One after is a Catholic priest,” Pierre said. “One before is a bishop. Two before is an archbishop or cardinal. And the pope puts ‘PP’ in his name.” “You have some kind of database?” I asked as I lay back onto the bed. I really didn’t care about anything at the moment. Chapter 11

Chapter 11 “SO MUCH for my extended warranty,” Oberon said. “The assholes at the store told me it was broken due to negligence. Negligence! It wasn’t broken, it was shredded, and it was attacked by a vampire who was trying to kill me.” “Did you tell them it was a vampire?” Lonny asked. “I probably said ‘goon’ or something. Whatever. They made me buy a completely new unit, and then they had the nerve to try and sell me an extended warranty on this one.” “Did you buy it?” Lonny asked. “Sure,” Oberon said, “but that isn’t the point. You get an extended warranty so you don’t have to worry about problems.” Lonny shook his head as he plugged in Oberon’s new slate PC to load it with all the custom applications that we use to calculate trajectory out in the field. He tried to tell Oberon that there are better, bigger, and faster computers to use in the field, but Oberon likes his toy. Over the next few weeks, our lives got back to normal. The Obscurati who were still in New York went back to wherever they called home. They had done nothing to help, which was probably a little embarrassing. Pierre and Hamlet went back to Switzerland. Lonny kept a list of all the humans who were present when that piece of paper showed up in my pocket. He knew the answer was somewhere on that list, but he never found it. To keep us safe, he started replacing every one of the humans: blood donors, security, and support staff. Everyone who was in the building when the Roman Catholic cardinal’s note arrived was laid off or fired or whatever you want to call it. Lonny’s background checks on the replacements were more thorough than the CIA’s. He was mortified that somebody so dangerous could get access to our room, which was theoretically the most protected part of a heavily guarded site. He was no fun to be around because he was obsessing over security. I would do the same, I’m sure, but still…. Lonny was somehow less carefree. He had always been happy about everything and willing to do almost anything and go almost anywhere. He grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, which is about sixty kilometers west of where I grew up. Not far, but it is like a different galaxy. Dallas tries to be cosmopolitan. It always tries, but it doesn’t always succeed. For the longest time, Dallas made a push to be an “international city,” whatever that means. I would see an article in the paper about businessmen in Dallas trying to attract international business. There could be another article on the same page of the newspaper about an attack on one of the racial minorities. There is a high number of Hispanics, and the whites sometimes think they need to go back where they came from. I want to fly

back home to smack some sense into those bigoted bullies, especially when you know enough about history to realize that Dallas is located in what once was Mexico. The whites stole the land from Mexico. The entire southern part of Dallas is either Latino or African-American. North Dallas is all white and full of right-wing hooligans. Yeah, that’s a real international city. Yeah, it makes me want to do business there. Bavaria is bad enough, but Texas is full of the worst kind of creepy bigots. Dallas has the reputation of being a big oil town, but there has never been a single commercial oil well in Dallas County. Not one! It is the home of several oil corporations, but it doesn’t have any oil. That is so Dallas: all the shells of power but none of the product. It has oil corporations without any oil. Fort Worth is more like a western town. It was the place that cowboys wanted to be when they had money. There were saloons and brothels in a part of town called Hell’s Half Acre. The cowboys would bring their cattle to the Fort Worth stockyards and then take all their money to the bartenders and prostitutes. It was a full-service town. It never had much of a gay area like other medium-size cities. It didn’t really need one, because the attitude of the locals was that what you did in bed was none of their business. That changed a little in the late twentieth century when right-wing bigots started moving to town and taking over. Fort Worth’s blight was race. It had a thriving Ku Klux Klan membership in the 1920s, just like Dallas. That was always a source of scandal to many who grew up there. Lonny was born in the 1970s and didn’t leave until the 1990s. His father was an engineer at General Dynamics, a company that made military jets. He was one of the programmers that wrote the controlling codes for the cockpit of the first American jet that could change the shape of its wings in midair, the F-111. It was a stressful job because there were always layoffs and hiring freezes at General Dynamics. The USA would get into a war, and the government would go crazy with military orders. GD would hire everyone they could find to work on the assembly line. Then the whatever-it-was would calm down, and the military would cancel contracts. As an engineer, Lonny’s father had a more secure job than those on the assembly lines, but it was taxing emotionally because he was around so many who never knew if they would have a long-term job or not. His father got leukemia at the age of forty-two. Lonny was only eleven at the time, and he ended up fatherless ten months later. It was a rare and very aggressive form of leukemia. “At least he didn’t suffer long,” they would tell Lonny. He wanted to strangle people when they said that. It was like some kind of automatic saying people use when somebody dies too young and too quickly. He suffered, and he knew he was leaving his family unprepared to face the world by themselves. Within just a few weeks of the diagnosis, his father was too

weak to get out of the house. He refused to be admitted to any hospital because they would only keep wires plugged into him. The man wanted to die at home, surrounded by his wife, his two children, and all those familiar trappings that we take for granted. When his doctor insisted on getting him into a hospital, he fired the doctor and found another. The first doctor was just too uppity or lazy to make a house visit, but the second doctor stopped by about every other day. Nurses were there too. Lonny’s father had two living sisters, and they moved into the family house to help. It was a family that pulled together in the looming crisis. His mother did her best to stabilize their standard of living as her husband lay dying in their bedroom, but the family had to struggle. The aircraft company paid for most of the medical bills, so that helped, but it wasn’t easy. It amazes me when I hear about medical bills in the United States. They’re supposed to be such an advanced civilization, but that’s a bunch of hooey when it comes to medicine. Everyone has health insurance in Germany. It just happens, and it isn’t such a big deal. People in the States actually die because they can’t afford medicine or a procedure, and those guys put themselves down as civilized. I may live in a rural part of southern Germany, but I know that when a human gets sick, they are treated properly. I don’t know how you can have a society that doesn’t have healthcare for all of its citizens. I read about the debate in America and how a government takeover of medicine would be a bad thing. There is no government control over the “supply side” of German medicine. The government says everybody has to have health insurance and that insurance companies can’t turn down anybody for any reason. Germany has some general standards on what good medicine is, like the US government does on its chemical and procedure approvals. To say there is government control is bullshit. We got into two world wars because our governments were out of control, so there is little tolerance for that kind of thing today. Germany takes care of its citizens. Period. The US, not so much. A few years after his father’s death, the situation was desperate. Lonny thought he was going to have to leave school without a college education just to help the family, but his mother married again. His stepfather ran a pawnshop. Lonny was never really friendly with his stepfather, but his mother seemed happy, and the pawnshop business was more than enough to support the family. Lonny always had a talent for taking complicated things and stripping them down to manageable chunks. It was the one big genetic trait he got from his father. When he graduated from high school, he got a scholarship to study in Bavaria for a year. He went to the Technische Universität München (TUM: Technical University at Munich), and he first met vampire blood donors from our manor in a gay bar in Munich. They told him a little about the scholarship program that my mentor Menz ran. They didn’t tell him about vampires, of course, be-

cause vampires are fictional characters. Lonny came out to the estate and talked with Menz and his lover Paco, and he was hired and given a complete scholarship to finish his studies at TUM. Oberon turned Lonny in the 1990s because he was quickly becoming part of our family. Humans who are in relationships with vampires always ask to become a vampire so they don’t age. As a vampire, Lonny can be part of the family for a thousand years or more. It isn’t as simple a process as you see in novels. First of all, you have to get permission from whoever is in charge. In Europe, that is Queen Cécile in Switzerland. Vampires who turn humans without permission run the risk of being sentenced to death by the vampire royalty. Pierre helped create a cover story for the university and Lonny’s family. Lonny was going to die in a mountain-climbing accident in the Alps. His sister and mother probably didn’t know he could climb mountains. Hell, Lonny didn’t even know he could climb mountains. Maybe that was why the story worked: he didn’t know enough about climbing not to be killed. Pierre found an isolated area near a Swiss glacier and got Lonny to tell all his friends at the university that he was going there. Pierre arranged for an avalanche that would have covered a human body. It was like Lonny was knocked into a crevice of the glacier by the avalanche, never to be seen again. Lonny didn’t like lying to his sister or mother. He knew it would cause them grief for years, but he was in love with me and Oberon. Lonny wanted to be a permanent part of our life, a ménage à trois. Lonny was one school term away from graduating with honors when he disappeared. I’m sure he would have liked to have a diploma, but he had almost all the education that TUM could offer. The Christmas break was a perfect time to stage an avalanche in Switzerland. Oberon trained Lonny’s body for the change for weeks. He drained Lonny of almost all his blood over the course of several days, letting all the human blood be converted into vampire blood. Oberon was gorged on Lonny’s blood. Right at the moment of Lonny’s death, Oberon started returning the blood. Turning would happen when Lonny received his own blood back, and that was what made any turning tricky. You have to time things carefully, and nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. Oberon almost waited too long to start feeding Lonny, and we came close to losing him. The vampires who turn children sometimes try to say it was an accident. They didn’t mean to turn the child. They say they merely took too much blood from the child and that they were trying to save the kid’s life. Yeah, right. You can’t turn someone by accident because it is a long and involved process. Turning a human before age twenty or so almost never works, because a young human brain isn’t developed enough to handle vampire powers. The child or teenager is only partially turned and is a brain-dead vampire. Sometimes the kid becomes a complete terror, killing

every human and animal in sight because of blood-hunger. Oberon and I get called in to finish some of those cases. I hate killing kids. They are innocent victims of their Maker, even if they asked to be turned. The vampire should have known to wait. Child vampires will never be able to control their blood-hunger, and that makes them a danger to other vampires. If a vampire causes attention to be drawn to a rash of killings, all the other vampires are in danger. The child has to be stopped, but sometimes the child is so powerful that the local vampires can’t do the deed. Oberon and I are summoned only when the locals fail to kill the child vampire. By the time we are on the job, the child’s Maker is already dead. That is the first thing the locals do. The Maker is punished in a way that cannot be misunderstood by any other vampire. You just don’t turn a child, and you get permission from the hierarchy before you turn anyone. We even had a case in Kenya where a vampire tried to turn a gorilla. No, it didn’t work. It was what I would call a partial turning. The gorilla was some kind of creature, but it was way out of control. It killed every animal it could find, and it was starting to attack human villages. The local vampires lost two of their own in trying to kill the gorilla-vampire. I hated shooting the creature because none of this was her fault. She didn’t ask to be turned—she couldn’t ask. It was abuse of the worst kind. In that case, I was able to kill the Maker in addition to the gorilla. They were living together in an underground cavern. I would love to kill more of these Makers, but they are usually dead before we are called. Kenya was a rare case.

OBERON and I set up a scholarship fund for Lonny’s sister based on what they thought was a large life insurance policy that Lonny had bought. We made sure that his mother and sister were set for life financially. After he had been a vampire for a few years, Lonny’s mother died under mysterious circumstances. We hired detectives to find out what the real story was. Our people said it was most likely the stepfather, who had turned into an alcoholic. We made sure the Fort Worth police got their hands on all our evidence. They arrested the stepfather and put him on trial. Our money came back to bite us. We were quietly helping out the family, but that gave the stepfather enough money to hire a really good lawyer who got all the charges thrown out on a technicality. In the USA, you can only take someone to trial once for a crime unless there are special circumstances. The stepfather got away with murder, and we helped pay for it. Worse, the stepfather started drinking again and was living in the same house as Lonny’s sister. We told the vampire king of the Americas all about the situation and asked for permission to kill the stepfather. Lonny was in favor of it. I was too, and both of us convinced Oberon that

it was to protect the sister. King Nopaltzin said no. The rule is that you only kill a human who is a danger to the vampire community, and the stepfather was only a danger to himself and to Lonny’s sister. The king tried to find a way to let us take out the stepfather, but he ruled the Americas by a set of principles that had kept vampires anonymous and hidden for thousands of years. The rule is that we don’t kill humans unless they are endangering vampires. If the king made an exception for us, we might tell somebody, and everyone would want exceptions. The king took a hard line in favor of vampire law. I understood his reasoning, but I didn’t like it. We respected the decision just because it was the right thing to do. Going against the king would probably mean a death sentence for us I told the king that we wanted to move to Fort Worth to keep an eye on the situation, so we could get the sister out if it looked like there was going to be trouble. He agreed, which was important. We are Obscurati, and we don’t just move into a territory without informing the king or queen. It is all very civilized. I started dating the sister. It was Hamlet’s idea, to get me closer to the house to see what was going on. Imagine that I was in love with her brother and was one of his two husbands. We didn’t tell her that because… well, just because. Life for humans is hard enough. The sister and I looked about the same age. She was nineteen at the time, and I was over a hundred years old. That’s close enough in age, right? Oh, and I was only available to date after the sun went down. During the daylight hours, I was dead and in a sunless bedroom wrapped in a loving embrace with her brother and our other husband, Oberon, who had turned her brother into a vampire. Oy, being a vampire is so complicated sometimes. The sister, Holly, was so much like Lonny that I really liked her. She was kind of a tough broad, blonde, and about as country as you can get. I thought Lonny’s Texas accent was thick. “Idea” became “eye-dee” when it came out of Holly’s mouth. My name was at least four syllables (“mo-uhr-tee-yun”), and I have no idea where some of the vowels were born. It was a sound that no linguist would ever be able to document. I don’t mean that she was a backwater hick. No, she wasn’t. Holly took me to a local art gallery called the Kimball, and docents all over the property recognized her. You could tell she spent lots of time at the museum, and she absolutely beamed when she explained about some of the pottery. She said it was Mayan and part of the museum’s permanent collection. Line up a hundred women in Fort Worth and try to pick the expert on pre-Columbian pottery, and you probably wouldn’t pick Holly. She looked like she would be happier with a mug of red beer and a horse. She might actually like those things, but she loved ancient ceramics.

She loved the museum and was proud to show me all the other sections. “It’s small, but everybody knows the Kimball in the art world.” We had met at the floral shop where she worked. She worked the late shift sometimes, and I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to buy flowers. Lonny was freaked out, but I reminded him that I was in love with him and not his sister. There would be no chance of getting her pregnant for several reasons: (A) Lonny would kill me; (B) I’m more of a bottom than she would be; and (C) vampire juice doesn’t have any living sperm. “It’s my sister, for God’s sake,” he said. “Stop talking like that about my sister.” “Just relax,” I said. “It will work out. You can name the offspring, but not the first son, who will obviously be called Lonny.” He hit me. “Ouch, Uncle Lonny, don’t hit me.” Holly and I went to movies and to the Botanical Garden. This town had a lot to offer. It almost made me wish we could move there. Maybe in a hundred years or so. She took me to see a play in a big theater downtown. The building almost shattered all the nice things I had been thinking about Fort Worth. The town tried to do so many things right, but this theater was awful. It was gaudy, straight out of a trailer park. The place looked cheap and had the acoustics of an upside-down bathtub. We spent hours watching television and movies at the house she shared with the stepfather. She could annihilate me in poker just like Lonny, so that ability was somehow a genetic trait. I could trounce her in Scrabble. We tried Twister one night, but that was completely weird. Maybe I shouldn’t even mention Twister. Holly was made from the same mold as Lonny. She was butch enough that it was kind of a turn-on for me. Don’t tell Lonny. I mean, what would I do with Holly? We could sit in bed and do macramé. The stepfather was a weasel. He was a drunk. I wouldn’t trust him with anything intricate or expensive, but he didn’t seem violent. He didn’t act like he wanted to be the breadwinner. By the time the sun was down and I was at their home, he was almost always drunk. He would sit for hours in a chair that was covered in plastic designed to look like leather. It leaned back so much that it turned into a kind of bed. There was always wrestling or baseball on the TV. Our time in Fort Worth was hard on Lonny. He worried about his sister. He was forced to stay in our rented building because he knew plenty of people in town who would recognize him. I know because one of them called his sister with some wild story about seeing Lonny at a bar near downtown.

“You’re gay,” the sister said to the caller. “Lonny wasn’t gay, and you were at a gay bar.” She listened for a while and then ended the conversation. “Lonny is dead, George.” She slammed the phone down with her hand shaking. I did my best to comfort her, but it was hard. Lonny was indeed dead, but not in the way she thought. When I got back to the rented building, I told Lonny about the phone call. I didn’t tell him about the shaking and the tears, but I got him to swear to stay in the building and to stop venturing out. “I promise that we will come back,” I told him. “Give it a hundred years or so, but we will come back here.” The whole situation needed to stop. I was supposed to be Obscurati, the kind of vampire who could fix impossible situations. Lonny was being torn apart. His sister was being torn apart. The stepfather was a weasely drunk. I had started by asking the king for permission to kill the stepfather. But if I couldn’t kill him, the poor wretch deserved pity instead of death. Maybe I could get him into some kind of detox program.

OBERON and I kept busy killing vampires several nights a week. They were mainly in the USA, but we had a run on contracts in Mexico. I think the vampires there were trying to cash in on drug traffic or smuggling humans to and from the United States, and they started enforcing their own private rules with too much vigor to suit the king. Canada was peaceful. We were almost never called to take out a vampire there. Either the Canadian vampires are better behaved than those in the USA and Mexico, or the locals can handle their own trouble. I enjoyed one hit in Mexico. It was on a vampire that I knew as Javier. He was rabidly antigay, but there’s a lot of that in the Mexican state of Jalisco down in the middle of the country. Javier had a well-protected lair or encampment with plenty of security (human, vampire, and electronic). Javier stayed right on the edge of being too much of a nuisance to the vampire king. Humans and vampires who crossed him tended to disappear. There was a string of murders in the city of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco. The news media said it was related to a drug cartel, and that was true. They were all people who had angered Javier in one way or another. King Nopaltzin had finally had enough of Javier’s methods. He was becoming too much of a public figure. The one unforgiveable crime a vampire can commit is notoriety. Javier got his picture in the local newspapers too often.

Javier’s encampment was on a large, flat plateau. It was impossible to get close enough to use the sniper rifle, and he always traveled in a car with a reinforced cabin. The windows of the car could withstand anything in our arsenal. We checked with the company that made the car body, which looked like a Cadillac but had few original parts. The doors had specifications that would make all of our ammunition useless, even the depleted uranium. Lonny arranged for us to get a dozen Spike missiles from someone in Columbia. The Spike is an antitank missile made in Israel. They can be fired from the ground using a portable launch tripod thingy. It has a camera inside so that once you tell it where to go, it will keep going without needing any more information. We got all twelve of the Spikes to our house in Bavaria, and Lonny started studying the literature. This was going to be his hit, because missile launching is well outside my skill-set. I let Queen Cécile know about our plan, and she agreed even though Lonny wasn’t officially part of the Obscurati. After the briefest of stays in Germany, Oberon and I whisked four missiles and one tripod into Mexico. The border guards might have an issue with Lonny coming into their country loaded with missiles and launch equipment. We were going to be doing them a favor, but it would have been difficult to explain if they had found the missiles. We rented a building ten kilometers (six miles) from Javier’s property. Because the land was so flat and deserted, Lonny had a fairly straight line of fire. On the appointed night, we got all of our nonessential gear back to Fort Worth and readied the missiles. He checked and rechecked the equipment, while Oberon and I made sure Javier was inside the compound. We saw him through a window using a telescope and flashed back to our building. As soon as we landed, Lonny was ready to fire. He looked at us to see if that was okay. “Give us a crispy, homophobic vampire,” I said. “Let’s burn this asshole.” He fired and didn’t wait for it to hit before reloading. He could get the tripod ready to fire another missile in less than a minute. He was almost like an assembly line. All of the targeting was done. He just had to get the Spike into the tripod and push some buttons and switches. “You make vampire go boom,” I said. You could see the flames. He had put two missiles into the main building of the encampment and one each into two smaller buildings. The entire place went up in flames. I’m sure there were innocent victims. No, not sure, but there might have been. In a way, it is hard to imagine that Javier kept anyone who was too innocent. I know there were no children in the compound. As soon as the fourth missile was in the air, I picked up the tripod and headed to Germany. Oberon picked up Lonny and went back to Texas. It made the newspapers in Europe. There was apparently a massive vigilante attack on a drug cartel that completely shut down their operation. One young woman was killed, and I felt really bad about it. Javier was listed as missing. He would be, because a vampire just leaves

ashes. King Nopaltzin wired us three million euros (almost four million dollars), so I suppose he was pleased. The money didn’t cover all our expenses, but our arsenal ended up with eight surface-to-surface missiles and a portable launch platform. Ooo-rah. Chapter 12

Chapter 12 I NEVER know what the proper term is for modern inventions. My last memory as a human was during the First World War. We had telegraphs, and our telephones had cranks and operators. The phone company had hired hundreds of people to measure their hands as a way of figuring out what size to make their newfangled rotary dialer. Now we have cell phones with their bars and satellites, and everybody can leave messages for each other. One of our human blood donors in New York told me that he hated e-mail because he didn’t want technology to get between him and the other person. That was why he always used the phone. So e-mail uses technology, but telephones don’t use technology. E-mail is some kind of artificial something, but telephones let you communicate directly. Fascinating. Then there’s voice mail. When I get a message, do I use “voice mail” by itself, or do I say that I got a “voice mail message?” I wonder if that blood donor in New York would consider a telephone message to be technology. I knew that I would have plenty of messages. I always have plenty of messages. When I first got back to Lechmont Manor, job one was to store the missile-launching equipment in the basement of the manor house. We mustn’t scare the kids or the groundskeepers, and military rockets would probably lead to all kinds of speculation and rumors. Ding. “It is Father Johannes, and I wanted to let you know that Walcker Orgelbau has been working in the chapel. They are installing the new organ! This is an awesome thing you guys are doing. Ludwig sends his love too.” Ding. “I am Lukas Schneider from Wien (Vienna). We met a few times at the chapel. I wanted to let you know that thanks to your generous… um… your nighttime church… you have touched many lives. Several of us are now banding… um… joining together for prayers in the night. We are starting a monastery of vampire Old Catholics here in Austria. Thank you so much for being so giving. Danke.” Ding. [sobbing] Ding. “It’s Holly.” [sobbing] “There was a robbery at the pawnshop.” [sobbing] “They killed my stepfather. I don’t know many details, but you said to call if….” [sobbing] “Sorry, I don’t….”

“LONNY’S stepfather is dead,” I told Oberon using mind-words. “How?” he said. “Robbery at the pawnshop, according to a message from Holly,” I said in my head.

“I’ll talk to Lonny, he probably knows from hearing you think about it,” Oberon said. “Tell him that I love him.” “He knows, but I will give him the message and tell him we will prepare a massive insurance settlement for the sister at some point.” “Thanks,” I said to Oberon in my head. “I love you, and I will see you tomorrow night.”

THE next night, I flew to Fort Worth to be with Oberon and Lonny. They told me to go over to see about Holly. She was still up, even though it was well after midnight. Holly was just staring at a wall in the kitchen when I walked in. They always left the back door unlocked. Holly wasn’t crying or upset. I think she was numb. She was alone: no mother, no brother, and no stepfather. Holly was an adult orphan, and she wasn’t sure what to do. I just sat with her. We talked about how her mother had met the man and how it all seemed so good that he was going to be a part of their lives. She told me what little she remembered of her biological father, but those memories were starting to fade. Holly couldn’t even remember the sound of his voice. We went over the funeral plans. It was going to be simple: something at the funeral home without any particular kind of minister or priest or rabbi. They didn’t belong to a religion, and the only friends were employees of the pawnshop. If it hadn’t been for the pawnshop employees, she said, she would have had no memorial service of any kind. It wasn’t that they were militant atheists or agnostics. They just had other things that ranked higher on their list. It was like they didn’t care what caused the universe or what part they played in it. She seemed confused as to what she was supposed to do with the pawnshop. I told her that she would know when the time came. When she saw the “insurance” settlement that we were planning, she might just give the pawnshop to the employees. The police were working the case because it was a big news item. A businessman had been killed in his store. Television stations did news stories every day reporting that there were no new developments and the neighbors didn’t really know much about the stepfather. Insightful: maybe they were trying for a Peabody or Pulitzer award. Holly told me the police had no idea who the robbers might be. They had taken nothing because everything of value was locked up in a safe. They all wore gloves and masks, according to the security cameras. It was almost like a hit, a murder-for-hire done by professionals. The footage showed the masked men walk into the pawnshop with guns already drawn. They knew the store had surveillance equipment, either because they had come in earlier to

look at the setup or because all pawnshops do. The police were going back through a month of recordings to see if they could find two men who matched the murderers’ heights and builds. What a tedious job that must be. It must be as bad as being an attendant on a tollway who takes money and makes change. Not even the amount changes for them. The stepfather had pushed a panic button, calling for police help as soon as he saw them come into the store. The two hooded men apparently had a few words with Holly’s stepfather and then just killed him. They left right after the shots were fired. Holly said the camera showed everything that happened. One of the men pulled out a business card and threw it on top of the dead stepfather. “Business card?” I asked. “White, embossed,” Holly said. “No company name or phone number.” “What was on the card?” “I wrote it down,” she said, pointing to a notepad on the kitchen table. I turned the notepad around to read it. Fra Diavolo. Chapter 13

Chapter 13 “IMPOSSIBLE,” Queen Cécile said. “Dement.” “English?” I pleaded. “I killed Brother Devil with my own hands,” she said. “Someone else might be claiming to be him, but it is impossible. No, he is dead.” “Could someone be trying to make you angry?” “Who?” she said in my mind. “I don’t know, but you might have made one or two enemies in the last six thousand years.” She got quiet. Thinking. “Maybe,” she said, walking into our room in Fort Worth. “Your Majesty,” I said. “Welcome.” “Hello, Cécile.” It was Nopaltzin, the vampire king of the Americas. They were both in our Fort Worth building. Note to self: get the locks changed if we stay here. “Nopaltzin,” the queen said aloud. I’m sure they could communicate without words. The noise was for my benefit. “My apologies for not telling you before arriving in your territory.” “You are always welcome here,” the king said. “You should plan to visit when there is no crisis.” “Oh, my,” the queen laughed. “There is always a crisis. You are trying to keep me in Europe.” The king said something that sounded guttural. Some languages sound like they hurt the speaker. There is an actual click in an African language or two. I once heard a newscast in Dutch, and I wanted to send a case of throat lozenges to the announcer. The king was making those kinds of noises, but the queen understood everything he said. Maybe it was a language that had not been used for thousands of years, or maybe it was a language that I just didn’t know. “Is English okay?” the queen asked. “Of course,” the king said. “I fear that Mårten will keep speculating on what we are speaking so that the mind-waves are too noisy to allow for words.” I guess I should have been embarrassed. “The king was saying that whoever is attacking you might be trying to get you into the open,” the queen said. “Maybe he is trying to get vampire royalty to respond.” “I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“When the United States and the Soviet Union were enemies without fighting….” “The Cold War.” “Avec precision: the Cold War. One side would stray into the other side’s airspace every few years. A mistake, but not a mistake.” “I don’t follow.” “If you were the Americans and you spotted a Soviet military aircraft, what would you do?” “See if it was a mistake or an attack.” “Exactement, and how would you do that?” “Radar or satellite.” “Very good. So one side would send an intruder every few years but not to sneak into the other side’s air space. It was a ruse to get the other side to turn on all their equipment at the same time. You can monitor radio and microwave signals. You can detect radar and sonar devices. So you are getting an education, not mounting an attack. You know exactly how the other side would react to an actual invasion.” “They did this?” “You really are a… Dummkopf… um… meathead, sometimes,” the queen said. “Being smart about your enemy is always better than just being a brute.” “Sounds like a lot of work,” I said. “Right,” the queen said, “but that is what keeps vampires alive for more than a few hundred years. Don’t forget that there is always someone or something out there that is stronger than you. I am here to make sure you don’t do anything.” “Huh?” “When you read ‘Fra Diavolo’ on that notepad, you turned all your radar and sonar on. I need to you stay calm and quiet. If someone is trying to draw you out into the open, you need to make it hard for them to do. You are being too easy a target, and that endangers Oberon and Lonny and everyone else who is close to you.” “What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Nothing,” the queen said. “I saw how you attacked the vampire Javier in Mexico, and it was brute force.” “I think that is why we were called,” I suggested. “We get the call when nothing else has worked. We come in and do whatever it takes.” “Probably,” she said, looking at the king. He nodded. “It was the easiest way of killing him, but Javier was an idiot. Whoever is killing humans in Tennessee isn’t an idiot. Whoever was able to get into your building in Manhattan wasn’t a pinhead. Whoever killed that man in the pawnshop was no dullard. The only way to keep all of us safe is for you to be smart, not just brutal.”

“Using a rocket wasn’t my idea, you know.” “You are one of the strongest vampires in the world in what you do, Mårten,” the queen said, “but you are a loggerhead. I need you to learn how to be a leader, and that is more about finesse than force. Don’t let Lonny run wild with weaponry and detection devices. Don’t let Oberon go nuts with munitions and technology. Keep your family quiet… alert, but quiet. If they are trying to lure you into turning on all your equipment, don’t do it.” “How do we get the jump on this guy?” I asked. “They always make a mistake,” the king said. “Everybody makes mistakes. I am insulted that this attack was in my territory and on my watch, and I apologize for that. Whatever resources I have are yours for the asking to put an end to this. But—and this is a big deal—you have to be smart. What the queen is saying is that you need to make sure the bad guys make the first mistake or a bigger one. If they are trying to lure you or the queen or me into the open, we might need a way to lure them out first.” “How?” “Bavaria,” the queen said. “Lonny has shields on many of your rooms in the manor, I think.” “Yes, ma’am.” “Bid your Texas friends goodbye and get Oberon and Lonny back to Germany,” she said. “If the three of you are the real targets, we need to get you all into the most shielded environment.” “And if the target is King Nopaltzin?” “Then I have a fight,” the king said. “I will call if it is something I can’t handle on my own. One doesn’t become a vampire king by running away from a fight.” “But you are asking me to run from a fight,” I said. It didn’t seem fair. The last thing on my agenda is running from a fight. I love mixing it up. I live to fight. “Know that you are welcome on the American continent,” the king said, “but Queen Cécile makes sense. In the worst case, these guys may be after the entire world of vampires. If we are all targets, we should keep being multiple targets. An attack on this room right now would take out a king and two queens.” “Two queens… oh, hah-hah. Hey, are you using words to keep our conversation out of the mind channels?” “See, Your Majesty,” the king said. “He can be trained. You were so wrong about him.” Chapter 14

Chapter 14 LONNY put one of the humans in charge of closing down the building in Fort Worth. I called Lonny’s sister and lied to her. “It is a great opportunity,” she said when I told her that I was being hired by a software company in Japan. The company supposedly wanted me to rush to Japan for a final interview. “I will call you when I know something,” I said. Maybe I would, or maybe I would just let her forget me. It was all creepy, stringing Holly along while sleeping with her brother. It was a sleazy thing to do to your husband’s family, but I don’t think the truth would have been better: “I am in love with your brother, who is dead but still walking on the earth as a vampire, and it is actually a ménage à trois between your brother and two vampires who are over a hundred years old.” The truth is sometimes more bizarre than a lie. Lonny took the Gulfstream back to Germany. I offered to carry him, but he said that he needed to transport some gear and papers that he didn’t want to trust to the humans. He said that none of the gear would cause a problem with border guards. It was layout plans for our security systems, and he thought he ought to keep that kind of thing with him. He planned to arrange for the Airbus to get the human staff out of Fort Worth and New York within a couple of days. He could finalize those arrangements from the Gulfstream, even if it was in the air. His jet always had the latest electronic goodies. Lonny is such a geek sometimes. There is no way that Oberon and I could run our empire without him. He said he would be putting the finishing touches on a consolidation of all our holdings into a corporation: Lechmont Enterprises AG. “You’re a bad influence,” Oberon said. “Whatever do you mean?” “Lechmont indeed.”

OBERON and I had barely gotten our gear stored in the basement when we got a call from Trieste. The queen keeps her yacht (read: ocean liner) parked there. The captain had called the queen saying he was in the Adriatic, about thirty nautical miles out of Trieste, and the yacht was under attack. I guess he had his hands full and wasn’t able to supply any details.

We gathered some assault rifles and NATO ammunition. This was a fight in the field and not a job for a sniper. When we were over the Adriatic, I saw the commotion in the distance. Hamlet and Pierre were already there, and they were seriously outnumbered and outgunned. There had to be two or three hundred vampires trying to kill them. By the time we got close enough to be noticed, Pierre was missing an arm. Hamlet had lost a leg. That would usually not be a problem, but finding the body parts in the Adriatic could be an issue. I can track, but I’ve never tried it underwater. If we survived, I knew that I would be the one asked to find the leg and the arm. If we could get them stuck back on, the vampire blood would reattach them without leaving a mark. “Hey, be careful,” I told Hamlet. “I don’t know if I can track any more body parts in the sea.” “Bite me, creep,” Hamlet said. “I could use some help.” Oberon got an idea of where Hamlet and Pierre were, and I knew what he was planning. I went to join the fight near their location. Sure enough, Oberon opened up with one of the assault rifles. He sprayed several hundred silver bullets into a cloud of vampires. He lit up the night sky with exploding vampires. They put on a kind of light show as they exploded, but several dozen others noticed the trouble and broke off from fighting Hamlet hand-to-hand and started moving on Oberon. “Oh, no you don’t, assholes,” I screamed as I got my own assault rifle off my back. I was unloading my magazine of silver bullets as fast as the rifle could fire. Oberon broke off the fight and fell toward the Adriatic. He was hurt again, so I followed him down. No, wait. He wasn’t hurt. He was reloading and had decided to dip the barrel of his assault rifle into the water. Salt water can’t be good on a barrel, but he was probably worried more about the rifle overheating than its long-term condition. While he was reloading, Oberon was fairly vulnerable. I sprayed the air with bullets while he put a new magazine into his weapon. When I was out of rounds, I grabbed a new magazine. Instead of taking the time to store the spent magazine, I let it fall into the water and got a full one from my duffel bag. I was ready to be back in the action in just a second or two. I didn’t need to rush because the remaining vampires broke off the fight. “Be smart now,” the queen said in my head. She didn’t have to tell me anything else because I knew what she wanted me to do. I tossed my assault rifle to Oberon, who put it into his own duffel bag. As he headed toward the yacht, I dove straight down into the water. It was almost as easy to see under the seawater as in a lake. The water was absolutely clear, and there was plenty of moonlight. Vampires don’t need to breathe, so I could stay underwater for as long as I wanted. I can’t feel temperature, so I don’t know if the water was cold or warm.

Finding Pierre’s arm was simple. It was stuck on a rock fifty meters into the water. It is dark that deep, but my eyesight is much better than it ever was as a human. Oh, Pierre’s arm was waving at me thanks to an underwater current. That is soooo sweet. I grabbed the arm and shot up, barely missing the yacht’s underbelly. That would have hurt. I tossed the arm through an open door of the bridge. The captain waved and gave me a thumbs-up. I went back to the water but got nothing. Okay, try sensing Hamlet. I knew his smell, but that doesn’t give me anything in the water. I closed my eyes but only got darkness. An hour went by. Hamlet might have to hobble around or get a fake leg. Oberon tapped me on the shoulder and pointed for me to go up to the surface. “They found the leg on the yacht,” he told me using mind-words. I put a finger over his mouth, telling him to be quiet. Pierre was completely healed when we landed on the yacht, but he was busy ripping Hamlet’s leg off for another try. Hamlet’s stub had healed before they found the leg, and Pierre had a knife out to take a slice off the end of his lover’s body. One of the humans was keeping Hamlet full of alcohol. “Everclear,” according to the label on the bottle. Pierre apologized for the pain, but Hamlet told him not to worry about it. “Try not to cut off any more bone than you have to,” he said with a smile. “You don’t want to be married to somebody who lists to the starboard all the time. Eeeee-uuuuuggght. Fick, ouch.” Oberon was there to help steady the leg and to make sure the bone of the severed part lined up with the bone that Pierre had just exposed with the knife. “God-fucking-crap,” Hamlet said. “Who were those vampires?” Pierre told Hamlet to be quiet. Hamlet was not in the mood to be quiet. I could see something inside: a predator was coming to life. Whoever attacked the yacht had pissed off a dangerous and deadly fighter. Without asking permission, Pierre picked up Hamlet and headed north. After making sure the captain was able to handle the cleanup, Oberon and I sprang into the air to follow. Oberon caught up with Pierre off at the horizon. I was the slowest vampire of the group. They all went to the house in Germany and were busy discussing the situation around a table in one of the new shielded rooms when I finally landed. It was a fairly large conference room made from an unused bedroom. Lonny had told us that he thought we needed to have an ultra-secure place to talk. It was like he saw our needs on a Ouija board. “Thanks, Mårten,” Hamlet said. “I know you were trying to help with my leg.” “It was either find the leg or get you to start walking on a wooden peg like a pirate,” I said.

“He has no pirate clothes,” Oberon laughed. “It would have kept everyone shut down as he retooled his wardrobe.” Hamlet gave Oberon the one-fingered bird and then drew his fingers together and pushed upwards. Very Italian. “So what are we going to do?” I asked. “This shit needs to stop.” “Remember Schmidt?” Pierre asked. “Sure, she’s the Swiss banker who handles all our money,” Oberon said. “Well, I had her… is this room secure?” “It is shielded against even the strongest radiation,” Lonny said. “Can you go outside of the room for a test? As soon as the door is closed, Hamlet and Mårten and I will try to talk to you using our minds.” “Good plan,” Pierre said as he flashed up to the door. “Don’t stay out there more than a minute,” Oberon said. “Gotcha.” Once we were alone, I started counting to a hundred in my head. I was thinking as hard as possible. After a minute, Lonny signaled for us all to be quiet. When we were, he went to the door. Pierre was there, listening. “I heard nothing,” he said as he closed the door. “Good work, Lonny. We need to add such shields to the building in Bern.” “They’re patented,” I said. Pierre just scrunched his eyes at me. “Schmidt the banker,” he said. “She knows Arturo Barbiconi, or knows of him. Wait here.” With that, he was out the door. In about two minutes, he was back, and Schmidt was with him. Vampire travel opens up a whole new panorama of possibilities. We don’t need video conferencing equipment because we can pop around—at least those of us who can fly. “Oberon, Mårten, Lonny, Hamlet,” she said as she greeted each one of us with a brisk handshake. “What can I do for you today? I assume you didn’t summon me to play lacrosse.” “Can you tell us everything you know about Arturo Barbiconi?” “Sure, but that is mostly from public records. Barbiconi is a cardinal bishop and the head of the IOR., which you probably call the Vatican Bank. Supposedly it is separate from the church, so Barbiconi pretends not to be in control. The bank has its own officers, executives, and board members. But he is not only the head of the IOR oversight committee, this cardinal controls the bank itself. Bank officers are something of a false front. The cardinal controls one of the largest concentrations of wealth ever amassed. It is money and precious jewels and artwork. It is an amazing portfolio.”

“Cardinal bishop?” I asked. “Not just a cardinal, but a cardinal bishop?” “That means he is a high-ranking cardinal,” she said. “He is a kind of über-cardinal. You asked for information, and I didn’t know how much detail you wanted. There is one other piece of information that you won’t find in any public record.” “Okay,” Oberon said, but she just looked at us. “What I am about to say to you doesn’t leave this room,” Schmidt said after considering her words carefully. She waited to see that we all agreed. “Some time ago, the queen asked me to be open about sharing this information with all of you, but I need you to know that what I am about to tell you could get us all killed.” She waited again and we all nodded. “I don’t know what it means, but the face of this cardinal is familiar to me.” “So?” I shrugged. “From the Renaissance,” she whispered. “I knew this person in Firenze… uh, Florence, in Italy—although we called it Fiorenza back then. We called him Girolamo Ghirlandaio, but I don’t know what his real name is.” “Giro….,” I tried to repeat. “…lamo,” she said. “Girolamo Ghirlandaio handled money for the Medici family, and he had some kind of fake tooth in the front. I don’t know what kind, but it looked strange. Back then, the Medici family ruled all of Europe. When the French invaded Tuscany, Girolamo was the one who paid the soldiers. The French found him and killed him, or that was the story put out by the Medici family. I even sent a condolence note to the head Medici—Lorenzo or Piero, I forget which—from one banker to honor the loss of another banker. I forgot the whole thing until the Second World War, when a newspaper in Switzerland did a story about the IOF during the war. There was a picture of Arturo Barbiconi that almost made me pass out. It wasn’t Barbiconi: it was Girolamo Ghirlandaio.” “So a cardinal at the Vatican Bank is a supernatural?” “Right, but he is not a vampire. I’ve seen pictures of him taken during the day, and some of those pictures are so old they predate computer software that could doctor an image. It really was daylight when the picture was taken. If Girolamo is a vampire, then he possesses abilities unknown to any other vampire anywhere.” “Wow,” Hamlet said. “No shit,” Oberon said. “Is there a way to prove it? I mean, it could be someone who looks like… uh….” “Girolamo,” Schmidt said. “It is him. I went to the Vatican in the 1950s and found myself in the same room. When I called out ‘Girolamo’, he turned to look at me before disappearing at vampire speed. It was him, the Renaissance banker. He grinned, and I saw his fake tooth. It

was golden. He is walking around in the daylight, so please tell me how a human who supposedly died six hundred years ago could be walking around in the sun.” We were all just quiet. I stared at the floor. “I got nothing,” I said. “That is my predicament,” Schmidt said. “I have only told two other vampires about this, and none of them knows how it is possible.” “Who knows?” I asked. “I told Queen Cécile and Menz,” she said. “That corpse… that vampire in the silver mask,” Schmidt said. “He’s dead, right?” “I didn’t see it, but the queen says she killed him. It was a bizarre fight.” “How so?” “The queen opened the door where he was being kept, and the queen spoke in French as she closed the door. So it was the queen and Fra Diavolo alone in the room.” “Do you remember what she said?” Schmidt asked. “Oui, elle a dit ‘Bonsoir, Michele’,” Oberon said. “Assuré?” Schmidt said. “Fils de salope.” “English, please,” I complained. “Oberon just told me that the queen said ‘Good evening, Michael’, as she walked into the room.” “And then she started trying to make us blush with her choice of descriptive words,” Oberon grinned. “Sorry,” Schmidt said. “How do you know he was killed?” “Apart from trusting the queen at her word?” “Yes, apart from that.” “There were ashes on the floor like what a vampire leaves.” Schmidt nodded. “So either Fra Diavolo was killed or the queen was killed and Fra Diavolo was able to assume her looks. I think we have to hope that he is really dead.” “But you also assume that vampires are active only at night,” I said, “and we know that this banker guy is up during the day. The banker is supernatural something, but not a vampire.” The queen had told me Fra Diavolo was definitely a vampire. She saw him feed many times over the centuries. He had fangs, drank human blood, and he was only active at night. “Short of doing a blood analysis, we have to think he was a vampire.” “Good point, plus he was immobilized by a silver mask,” Hamlet said, looking worried. “But why did the queen use French?” “Simple,” Schmidt said. “Michele was an Italian warrior who fought against Napoleon. The queen would have used French as a kind of insult.”

“She was trying to throw him off balance with words,” Hamlet said. “She got him to concentrate on her words so he didn’t pay attention to her movements.” Schmidt nodded. “Let’s assume that Fra Diavolo is dead. How would you draw out this banker?” “I don’t…,” Schmidt stammered. “If he is a vampire who can walk in the daylight, then he is more powerful than any vampire I’ve seen or heard of. If he is something other than a vampire, I would want to know what kind of creature he is before trying to get him into a fight. Luring a monster into an ambush will just make the monster angry. If you can’t end things on the spot, you are only asking for trouble.” “Rosicrucian energy tricks.” It was a man’s voice, coming from the far corner of the room. The banker was in the room. Barbiconi had somehow made it into this secured and shielded conference room without opening any doors or tripping any alarms. We were locked in a windowless room with thick shielding of steel and iron and cement. The door was bolted on the inside using a large steel bar. It looked like a regular room, but we were completely surrounded by metal sheeting and wood paneling. The room’s defenses should have been impossible to breach. My heart jumped into my throat, and that is hard to do, because a vampire’s heart doesn’t beat. I got an adrenaline rush even though I don’t think we have adrenaline. “Some say I am part of a Masonic group, or the Knights Templar.” “What are you?” Schmidt asked with more calm than anyone else could muster. She was holding back Pierre and Hamlet, who wanted to attack. “If I were a betting man,”’ he said, “which I’m not, I would say the Illuminati. But I am merely a humble cardinal and bank overseer.” “What did we do to enrage you?” I asked, barely above a whisper. In a flash, Barbiconi was across the room and within a few inches of my face. “This is not rage, Mårten,” he said quietly with a grin. I saw his golden tooth. “I do not want to show you my rage.” “What do you want?” Oberon asked. “I want you to die.” “Why?” Oberon asked. “Because of what you are: vampire. It is evil. You cannot be allowed to continue with your unholy existence. You cannot be permitted to feed off innocent children. You cannot be permitted to survive. You take children and make them do unspeakable acts, and then you murder them for their blood.”

“I don’t kill children,” I said, knowing that I had killed plenty of child-vampires. “Liar,” he whispered. “You defile your own body by sleeping with another man as though he were a woman. You have sex with not one other man, but every man you can draw into your web of deceit, and then you kill the other men. But it does not stop there, as it never did with Menz.” “What do you know about him?” “I know that he was an abomination in the eyes of God. I know that he performed the most heinous acts, beyond anyone’s imagination, and then he mocked the very heart of God’s work on our beloved earth by opening his lands to that awful so-called church.” “Is that what this is about?” Hamlet said. “The Old Catholic Church?” “Shut up, pervert,” Barbiconi said. “You were not married in a church. It isn’t a church at all, or they would have shut their doors against such beings as you and that other one. Two men cannot be married. They cannot feel love except within wicked forms of treachery and dishonesty. You were not married then, and you are not married today. You have created an unholy parody of everything that is good and sacred. Marriage is between one man and one woman, not two men, certainly not three men. And you try to spread the lies against God’s church. Your so-called pastor holds services—considered the most sacred rites of mankind—but they are a lie. He opens them to monsters like you. Vampires cannot be priests, and yet this heretical cult you support has admitted a vampire to their training program.” “At least he isn’t gay,” Hamlet said. “Seal your mouth, you depraved creature, or I will send you to the fires of hell tonight.”

I WISH I could tell you that we ganged up on the intruder and killed him on the spot. Unfortunately that isn’t what happened. At least I don’t think it did. We all heard the threats from Arturo Barbiconi, and that was the last any of us remembered. All of us woke the next night. We were on the floor of Lonny’s newly renovated bedroom; we had fallen where we sat, getting ready for bed. The bed itself was untouched. Oberon and Lonny and me, Pierre and Hamlet, and Schmidt. It was the only time in my life that I slept with a woman. She is a lesbian vampire, so I’m not sure if it counts. Somehow Barbiconi had made us all pass out, and that was how we stayed through an entire day. As usual, all of the other vampires were awake before me. They had six humans in the room, and I assumed the unoccupied one was supposed to be my breakfast. Chapter 15

Chapter 15 “Well, I guess you drew him out,” Queen Cécile said in my head. “Lonny says that he has a few ideas,” Oberon said, “but he won’t tell us.” That part was true, and none of us asked him any questions. Lonny kept to himself as he worked on whatever plan or weapon he wanted to use against Cardinal Barbiconi. I don’t think he even told the queen about the specifics.

BUSINESS for Oberon and me was brisk. We took jobs in France, Poland, Libya, Syria, and on Pico Island off the coast of Morocco. We covered that much in just a few days. All the time we’d spent in New York and Texas had let rogue vampires run wild. France and Poland paid “scale” because those were considered home territory. The queen didn’t feel she should have to pay our higher rates. Outside of Europe, the local vampires paid whatever Oberon asked. It was based on how much work we had to do and how annoying he found the locals. The vampire on the island was hard to kill. She had dug a cave in the crater of an active volcano. Active? Really? Vampires live for hundreds or thousands of years, and this one somehow came to the conclusion that a cave inside an active volcano was a good place to make a home. It isn’t a deserted area, because humans like to crawl around in the crater and look at all the lovely grottos and caves. Hello, people! Active—repeat, active—volcano. Our guide and spotter told us that the vampire was not on the big volcano that dominates the island. “She is in the crater of a volcano between the islands,” the guide said. He was pointing to the ocean. Oh, this one kept getting better and better. The vampire had taken up residence in the crater of an active volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, underwater, and between two of the islands of the Azores. “Who trains these vampires?” I asked Oberon using sign language. “The cat purrs in the window beneath a bucket of blue piss and purple spaghetti,” he told me using sign language. Huh? Wait, maybe he used some sign language that I didn’t know. I think that I missed something. Just a guess. You know, I’m just sayin’. The guide said that the vampire was very old and had lived in the Azores for hundreds of years without incident. A year ago something happened to her brain. Some of our senior cit-

izens get a kind of vampire dementia. They are fine for hundreds of years, but one night they wake up crazy and start terrorizing the local humans. “I got nothing that works underwater,” Oberon told me using hand signals. “Hand-to-hand combat?” The guide said that she had no pattern to her attacks. The victim would be any age and any location. It was like the vampire took a random-human selector on each of her hunts. Not only was the island selected from the Azores at random, but the time of the attack was all over the charts too. The guide said the demented vamp was too good a fighter for us to attack. Hand-to-hand combat was out of the question. “I have an idea, but I need an assault rifle,” I told Oberon. “Tomorrow night, dark forty-five,” Oberon told the guide. It was the only time that the guide heard either of us speak. With that, we were off to Syria. Oberon set his wrist-mounted GPS device as we flew eastward. He scooted out in front to take the lead because I was heading too far south. We would have been over Africa instead of the Middle East. The Syrian vampire was out in the desert. That describes most of the country, but this lair was in the north, near the border with Turkey. It was a teenager who hadn’t been turned completely. The teen-vamp was so strong that he had killed his Maker. That meant that the newly turned vampire wasn’t able to take enough of his Maker’s blood. In effect, the teenager had murdered the only source of blood that would complete his turning. Impossibly strong vampire: check. Desert landscape with no place to hide a sniper nest: check. Like I said, we only get called when the locals are out of ideas. I looked around and decided that I had no ideas either. The guide told Oberon that the young vampire had been drinking animal blood but had recently discovered a taste for human blood. He almost always attacked young women and was leaving a body count that was getting noticed by the local human authorities. His lair was a hole on the side of a ridge. It was more like a sand dune that had a crusty covering. There was neither vegetation nor rocks. There were no other hills. In other words, we had no place to hide. Our price was partly based on how annoyed we got during the killing. I could feel the price going up by the minute. Ka-chink. The guide didn’t know if the teenager was in his hole or out killing humans. Ka-chink. Our home in Bavaria was almost three thousand kilometers away. I could travel that distance in fifteen or twenty minutes. We had to leave that much time to get shelter. A desert with no place to hide is really bad for somebody so allergic to daylight. Ka-chink. Our price kept going up. Ka-chink.

As usual, Oberon minded the time. He would point to an imaginary wristwatch, and that was always my signal to get back to Bavaria. He set up his equipment on the desert plateau, sitting lotus-style while getting information about distance and wind speed. He even looked at the relative humidity. It’s a friggin’ desert, for crying out loud. It is dry! As I got out my rifle and set it up, I ran the cleanout rod inside the barrel like a good little sniper. There wasn’t any moisture in the barrel. It is dry. Hello: desert! I worked the lever of the loading mechanism to make sure everything moved. I made sure the safety lever was horizontal and then attached a full magazine. One pull of the cocking lever moved the first round into the chamber. Oberon got his numbers ready, and his trajectory numbers always work. His input for my gonzo telescopic laser sight makes my trigger finger deadly to vampires that have gone rogue. And then the exciting part: wait. We put our equipment into duffel bags and covered the bags with sand. Only the handles were exposed, making our retreat as fast and simple as possible. We were exposed on the plateau because there was no place to hide. It would have been better for us to wear sand-colored clothing, but there were two problems with that. First, nobody had told us the hit had a dress code, and all our clothing was back in Germany. Second, Oberon is a Goth, which means he only has black clothing, with a few white shirts for contrast. Just as Oberon was about to point to his watch, the teen-vamp returned. I could see blood all over his face, and that meant another human had lost her life that night. He didn’t even wash the blood off his face. This younger generation: no manners. I relaxed and looked at the vampire through the sight as my thumb eased the safety lever to its vertical position. It was a regular daylight sight because night vision equipment uses infrared. Even with my vampire vision, it was almost impossible to see this guy. There was no moon overhead. Ka-chink. Moments before he scampered into his hole, I squeezed the trigger. On a hunch, I put another round right on top of the opening of his cave. It was a good decision, because the first shot missed. It hit the crusty sand above the hole, and the vampire raced to get underground. He was busy covering himself with sand when the second bullet found its mark. The desert lit with a tiny flash of light, and the vampire was dead. I pulled the safety lever and was on my way back to Germany when I noticed Oberon hadn’t whooshed past me. When I arrived back in our sniper nest in Syria, a teenage vampire was attacking my husband. I turned into a vampire rocket to get back to earth. As soon as I

grabbed the kid, he turned on me. That was his mistake, because I’m a good fighter. I was tired and wanted to be home in Germany, and I certainly was in no mood for him to be attacking my family. I grabbed the rogue by the head and pulled it off his body. The teenager spewed blood all over the desert. Oberon was okay but embarrassed. Ka-chink. There had been two rogues in the cave, and my bullet had hit the other one. I didn’t miss: this attacker was a second vamp. Ka-chink. The fee more than tripled because there were two vampires, not just one. It went up because the locals hadn’t told us the full extent of what our job would entail. Maybe they didn’t know about the second guy, but they were supposed to know. They were losing locals to these two because somebody hadn’t taken the time to investigate the situation properly. You have to fight two rogues with a whole separate technique than you do one. If we had been regular vampires not used to fighting rogues, they might have been able to kill us too. The pair was good but not good enough. The fee went up even more because Oberon was intensely annoyed by the situation. Kachink. Ka-chink. We barely made it back to Bavaria before daylight. We flew low for the last few minutes to stay out of the gamma radiation that was beginning to peek over the horizon. I could feel myself losing speed. The rays were about to knock me out of the sky. I would have fallen in a hallway of our house if Lonny hadn’t encased everything in aluminum sheeting. The shielding gave me enough extra time to make it to my room before I died for the day. It was close.

THE next night, Oberon shook me awake as soon as he was up. We fed quickly, and Oberon skipped his first fuck of the night. Ka-chink. Ka-chink. We grabbed two M16 assault rifles and a bag of preloaded magazines. Most were marked “Ag,” the abbreviation for silver on the periodic table of elements, but some were labeled “238,” which is how Oberon identifies our depleted uranium ammunition. You would think that all uranium is deadly to vampires, but the depleted uranium he uses actually works as a kind of sponge that soaks up gamma rays. I use his 238 bullets when I have to get through a layer of steel or concrete. The 238 rounds are also designed to explode after they have pierced whatever they hit first. In a few minutes we were back in the Azores. The guide met us on the island closest to the submerged lair. He said that she hadn’t been seen, not by any vampire or any of the human spotters that watched the area during the day. The locals were keeping around-the-clock tabs on the vampire.

So we waited, but not for long. The vampire came blasting out of the Atlantic Ocean with a tall column of water following. We flashed up into the sky to give chase. The target headed toward Europe, probably Portugal or Spain, but we were just in follow mode. I didn’t care where she took us, so long as Oberon could keep her in sight. Silly me: nobody is faster than Oberon. They left me struggling to keep up. Oberon maintained a safe distance, hoping to avoid detection, but this rogue vampire was old. You don’t become an old vampire without being able to smell trouble. She took weird turns and flew at several different altitudes. Oberon was trying to send me mind-messages. Every time he sent me a word or image, the target felt the messages and slowed down to look around. She headed up into a cloud, and Oberon just held still. I caught up and took the lead in the chase. We didn’t need speed so much as tracking, and I am a really good vampire tracker. Hide a vamp, and I’ll find it. This one was all over the place: north, south, east, and a couple of directions that hadn’t even been invented. She flew up and down, in and out. I was almost dizzy, but we were able to stay inside the cloud as we traced her route. Somewhere over a mountain, the trail stopped. I had nothing. The trail just stopped. Could the vampire cloak herself? Did she find a way…? No, downward. She had landed. We followed her down to the ground just as she was attacking a family asleep in a farmhouse. A woman and several children were screaming. A man was there with a shotgun. He didn’t have a shot that wouldn’t endanger his family. Oberon went to the man and grabbed the shotgun. He threw it out of the window. A shotgun with ordinary bullets isn’t going to do any permanent damage to a vampire unless the shot is close enough to blow the vampire’s head off. In a house, that was a possibility, and Oberon wanted the human to be unarmed. As my husband tended to the human, I went after the vampire. She had one of the children, and her fangs were buried deep in the youngster’s neck. I pulled the child away and tossed her to Oberon. He would know how to stop the bleeding if we weren’t too late… if, if, if. As soon as Oberon had the child, the rogue vampire turned her attention to me. I had interrupted a meal. The demented vamp was really annoyed by our presence. She was infuriated that we would come and get in her way. She showed me her fangs with a growl. Why do vampires even do that? It is so Hollywood: hiss with an open mouth. Ooo, scare me. It isn’t like these are the only fangs I’ve seen. One set of fangs is about like any other set. Old vampires don’t get longer fangs. They are all about the same sharpness.

Oy. I hissed back at her and showed her my own fangs. Just as I thought: she wasn’t impressed enough to back down. If you’ve seen one fang, you’ve seen a million of them. One of the little boys showed a damp spot on the leg of his pants. Oops. In a flash, she was on top of me with her mouth all over my neck. Okay, her fangs were fairly impressive, but only because of her overall speed. She was draining me or trying to rip out my throat. I grabbed onto her wrists to keep her from pulling off my head. Oberon joined the fight just long enough to get the vampire to turn on him. He quickly flashed out of the farmhouse and dashed up several meters. I shook my head and followed as fast as I could. The two of them were rolling in the air. She was hissing and brandishing her teeth. Oberon thought it was a funny display, and that really displeased the old vampire. She didn’t like being the brunt of a laugh. She spotted me in the air and was trying to break free from my husband. Oberon grabbed an ankle and spun her around. She was doing cartwheels in the air a few meters off the ground. I got a terrifying image in my head. “Cell phone cameras,” I told Oberon. We both shot straight up into the sky, and the old vampire followed. Once we were above the clouds, the fight could continue. Off in the distance, I could see flashing lights through a break in the clouds. The man had called the police, and they were beginning to respond. Within a few minutes the farmhouse would be crawling with uniforms and badges. As I fought the target, Oberon moved away, a hundred or so meters to the north. He told me to flash upwards. I had no idea what he wanted to try, but in the middle of a fight you just do what you’re told. When I was free of the vampire, she decided to attack Oberon instead of trying to follow me to a higher altitude. Oberon was ready with his M16. He emptied half of the magazine of “Ag” ammunition into the vampire. The first round was enough, but Oberon was in as close to fight mode as he gets. He was pumped and didn’t realize what he was doing. The target made a quick sizzle as she burned. Hopefully all the extra rounds would find a harmless place to land. We headed back to Bavaria without collecting our pay. Pierre called the next night to say the local vampires in the Azores were pleased. They wired €1 million (roughly $1.2 million) to our account at Schmidt’s bank. Not bad pay for a couple of hundred-year-old vampires. The locals started to ask for proof of the kill, but Pierre sidestepped the issue. He said the proof was ashes. If they ever spotted the vampire again, the Obscurati would be happy to refund the entire amount and to come take the vampire out at no cost.

“You did kill her?” Pierre asked using mind-words. “She’s dead as a friggin’ can of beer in a Louisiana whorehouse,” I said. “Is that dead?” the local asked. “Ich denke,” Oberon said. “It is the mother of all deaths,” I added.

THE kill in Libya was on the side of a mountain. You could end up in Algeria just by leaning in the wrong direction. The vampire had found a cave carved in the granite mountain. He felt safe because he had a wide panorama. Nobody could get close to this guy without being spotted. As I saw it, we had four possible schemes. We might be able to come up the back side of the mountain and sit higher on the slope. We could stay at the same altitude and kill the guy as he flew into his cave. I could take a shot from the sky. Or we could fly back to Germany, get one of Lonny’s Spike missiles, send one into the mouth of the cave, blast the cave over into Algeria, and let the local Algerians deal with it. I was leaning toward… um, okay, four. The perch in the sky was out of the question, because nobody had seen any clouds in the area for years. I didn’t like moving along the side of the mountain because that meant the shot would include left-to-right aiming. I hate left-to-right aiming almost as much as I hate right-to-left aiming. Give me a target moving toward me or away from me, and my sniper rifle will almost always turn the doomed vamp into fireworks. The Libyan mountain didn’t offer much in the way of a shot from the top. We looked, and I really tried to make it work. Nothing. “Are you sure we can’t just blast him into Algeria?” I asked Oberon. He put his finger over his mouth. The honeymoon is officially over after a hundred years. When your husband tells you to be quiet, there is no going back to the I-love-you-no-matterwhat days of the first hundred years of your relationship. That left me with a left-to-right shot, and I found it really annoying. Ka-chink. If the vampire kept a steady speed, I could make the shot. Otherwise, we would be here awhile. Just as I had the sight adjusted according to Oberon’s numbers, there was motion at the cave. The vampire had landed while I was adjusting the sight. Crap. No, wait. The vamp had brought dinner back to the lair, and the human had somehow escaped and run into the night air. The target was outside in a flash and was just about to attack

the human in a way that nobody could evade or survive. Squeeze… wait… wait… pop! Sizzle. It was easier than I thought, thanks to the human, who got the vampire to be still long enough for me to get a dandy shot. The poor guy had no idea what had just happened, but I was fairly sure he would have to change his pants soon. He might not even know where he was, but he knew that he was alive and that the monster who had attacked him was nowhere in sight. Oberon flashed over to the cave and grabbed the human by the waist. He probably thought the attack was on again, but my husband was trying to get him off the mountain. The human wiggled free and started falling back to earth. He hit a granite boulder and started to bounce down the face of the mountain. I would have just let him fall, but Oberon did his best to catch the human again. The human was unconscious when they landed on the ground at the bottom of the mountain. I thought we were about to go home, but that is so not like my husband. Oberon picked up the human by the chest and started heading northeast. When we were over a village, Oberon gently put the human down in front of a house. He made enough noise to get the humans to come outside. They found the injured human, and Oberon and I flashed north to Germany.

THE kill in Poland was nothing. I think the queen’s local troops were being lazy. Our nest was in a wooded area about half the effective range of my Barrett M82A1. The lair was a wood cabin. I had a clear shot at the entire front of the cabin. Even if I didn’t hit the target directly, I would be able to make the cabin go boom. The bad guy probably had a hole inside the cabin, which seemed too flimsy to offer any real protection during the daylight. And so we waited and waited and waited. I used hand signals to ask Oberon if he’d brought a deck of cards. No. And we waited and waited. Oberon was motionless. It was almost like he was trying to avoid eye contact with me. I hate it when he does that. It makes me so mad that I want to run over and shake him. When anything is wrong, Oberon retreats into a shell like he is part turtle. Maybe I could slap some sense into him. A hundred years with the same vampire, and some nights I don’t even know him. He sulks, and that makes me mad. If he’s upset about something, he needs to tell me. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Motion. I saw movement in the cabin, but it stopped almost as soon as it started. For a brief moment, reality drew my attention away from my family.

And Lonny. He is so engulfed with his designs and renovations that he stays off on his own. He acts like he is only a part-time member of our family. When the three of us are together, Oberon and Lonny act as though they want to be alone. All of a sudden, it was a bicycle built for two, and I was the third wheel. I don’t get to ride the bicycle, and I don’t know why. Motion again. I saw something moving quickly in the dark room of the cabin. It was just one simple streak across the window. I concentrated on the cabin and its window, but I saw nothing. There was no vampire inside, or it was one of those vampires that can shield themselves from me. Pierre is the only one I know who can do that, but there are probably others. I squinted my eyes like that would help me see what was going on in the darkened cabin. Vampire vision is awesome. I can see in areas that humans call “pitch black,” but I saw nothing in the cabin. There was a streak of motion and then nothing. Maybe it was a fan oscillating back and forth. Maybe the fan had caught the draperies or some other cloth inside the room. Why had Oberon insisted on being Lonny’s Maker? Maybe he was tired of me and was looking for somebody else. Vampires are territorial for a reason: we have territory that needs to be protected. Even somebody who is part of the family can turn. Even Oberon could become an enemy if he wanted to be. My vampire blood was meeting my Viking blood, and that was always an explosive mixture. Motion. Fucking cabin. I pulled the safety lever on the sniper rifle, put it on the ground, and reached in my duffel bag to grab the pistol. I was landing near the cabin a second later. I mean, fuck this shit. Enough waiting. Enough of this motion with no follow-through. There was either a vampire in the cabin or not. I didn’t really care one way or another. I just wanted to be done and out of here. “What’s going on?” Oberon said in my ear. He wasn’t using mind-words but had flashed up to the clearing in front of the cabin. I turned and gave him an icy stare that hid the whitehot anger that was about to boil over inside. As I walked to the window, I saw motion again. There were two figures inside. And… Lonny? Holy shit, somebody had Lonny in the cabin. Chapter 16

Chapter 16 ARTURO CARDINAL BARBICONI turned around and looked directly at me as I walked up to the window. He grinned, showing plenty of teeth. I saw his gold tooth, but no fangs. He had Lonny wrapped up in silver chains, but the silver didn’t seem to cause the cardinal any discomfort. Okay, I’ve had about enough from this goon. There was nothing Oberon could say or do to keep me out of the cabin. If Barbiconi was trying to draw me out into the open, he was doing a good job. I wanted to fight. I wanted to grab Barbi-fucking-coni by the hair and rip off his holier-than-thou head. I burst through the front window and was standing in the main room of the cabin. Lonny was…. Where was Lonny? For that matter, where was Barbiconi? The cabin was empty. Oberon and I spent an hour tearing out everything. We reduced the entire building to raw lumber, but Lonny was nowhere. There was no secret hiding place under the floor, because we had ripped it out. By the time we finished, the cabin was a pile of dead lumber stacked in what had been the front yard. No Barbiconi. No Lonny. There wasn’t even any evidence that they had been present. “You did see them, right?” I asked. “Yeah, it was them,” Oberon nodded. We expanded the search area and buzzed around through the forest in expanding arcs. “Did you hurt him?” I snapped. “Fuck off,” Oberon said quietly, and it stunned me. “I mean it, man, just fuck the shit off my goddamn back. Ever since I turned Lonny, you’ve been on my case. You’re jealous that I like him. Well, you’re wrong… I don’t like Lonny. I love him. And if you keep after me, you can just pack your goddamn bags and move.” “Lonny!” I screamed in my head. “What’s up?” Lonny asked using mind-words. “Are you okay?” Oberon thought. “Fine, why?” Lonny said. “Where are you?” I asked. “Bavaria, like when you guys left.” “And you’ve been there all this time?” “Sure. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is. See you in a jiffy.” With that, we were both in the air and racing back south to the estate. Lonny had been in the house the entire time. He hadn’t seen Barbiconi, and the security equipment showed no anomalies.

PIERRE popped over from Bern. He had heard all the screaming and came to help. I wasn’t sure if he was coming because I was hollering for Lonny or because Oberon had wigged out on me. “Mind fuck,” he said. “Barbiconi can get inside our minds and plant… not just images… but whole events.” “So back when he was here in the house?” Oberon asked. “I guess we don’t really know if he was here,” Pierre said. “He was here,” Lonny whispered. “I can document that he was here.” “How?” “Never mind that now,” Lonny said. “Just trust me that he was here.” “I’ve had about enough of this asshole,” Oberon said. Boy, that was really out of character for him. He doesn’t really curse much, and he keeps his emotions in check. Oberon had gone from deep-water emotions to white-water rapids. Barbiconi had pushed all our buttons. “Easy, guys,” Pierre said. “If you attack, then you are doing just what he wants you to do.” “What do you suggest?” I asked him. “Do you want to stay in Bern for a while?” he suggested. Oberon was considering it. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it masked from me. “We have a few tricks,” Lonny said. When we looked at him for an explanation, he sat quietly. He didn’t want to tell us what he was planning. I guess we can trust him. He’s a wizard with electronics. Lonny was able to find awful weapons like that Israeli missile system we had locked away in the basement. Except the guy we all wanted to kill had shown an uncanny ability for bypassing the security. Pierre and Oberon and I were stumped. We sat in leather chairs at one end of the newly renovated conference room. It was the room that Barbiconi had been able to crack. Lonny just wouldn’t say anything. I wanted to head to Rome and take matters into my own hands. “I guess we will let Lonny do whatever it is he is planning,” Oberon said as he stood to leave the conference room. “Pierre,” he said with a short nod of the head.

“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Pierre said as he flashed to the door. Oberon was waiting at one of the doors leading to the back garden. When he saw Lonny and me, he went outside. It was a cloudy night, cool, according to the thermometer, even though I can’t actually feel temperature. “What just happened?” I asked. Oberon just shook his head. He wouldn’t say anything to me. “This life we have is complicated,” he whispered. “You want some time off from the Obscurati?” “I want some time off, but I don’t know from what.” I felt a lump grow in my throat. “Why do you think you have to be the tough guy?” Oberon asked. “I… ummm… I don’t…. Why do you have to fuck four or five guys a day?” “Don’t try to turn this back on me.” “Fan ta dig,” I said. “Some of us know a little Swedish, you know,” Oberon chided. “Good. I didn’t know it was a ‘bitch out Mårten’ session.” “See?” Oberon said. “You always get defensive. You put up walls and never let anybody get in. And when you fuck something up, you put up more walls.” “I didn’t know,” I said distantly. What did Oberon want from me? In a hundred years with this man, I had never seen him like this. “Sorry,” I added. Oberon and I looked at the clouds. I felt a tear building in my right eye. I so didn’t want to be having this conversation. What did it even mean? Were Oberon and Lonny planning to leave me? Really? I was the one who had brought us all together, and now they wanted to toss me aside like yesterday’s loaf of bread? Could I have done something to Oberon that was so bad he would consider this? “Boys,” the queen said as she drifted down into the garden. I started to get up, but she motioned for me to stay seated. We must have had the kind of situation that made vampire noise all over Europe. The queen was here because part of her job is to keep us all calm. Oberon turned to me, and I saw a tear streaking down his cheek. His frown turned into a partial grin. When his lips parted slightly, I saw a sparkle of gold. “Barbiconi!” I yelled and lunged. The queen stopped me, and Lonny ran up to hold me. Oberon was standing off to the side. He was afraid of me. “Why were you hollering about the Vatican banker?” the queen asked. “He was just here,” I said, shaking.

“No,” Oberon said. “He looked like you, but then he smiled and I saw his gold tooth.” Oberon walked up and showed me all his teeth. He pulled up his lips to let me inspect every tooth. They were white. Oberon had nothing gold in his mouth. His fangs were out, which meant he was angry or hungry or horny. Maybe all three. “Come, sit, Oberon,” the queen said. Oberon hesitated but came up and joined us. He and Lonny held hands, leaving me to sit alone. We sat in silence. She let ten or fifteen minutes pass without a word. She stared at the garden and the sky. Her silence was loud and disturbing, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I shifted my weight in my chair, and she just ignored the motion. She sat and looked at the garden. It was awkward for me. Just when I was about to say something, I felt fingers tracing down my arm. It was Lonny, reaching out to me. That’s when I completely lost control. My face was red from tears, and they kept coming as Lonny held my hand. I closed my eyes and squeezed back. While my eyes were still closed, I felt someone on my other side. It was Oberon: I could feel him without having to open my eyes. I pulled both of their hands into my lap. The three of us sat in silence, holding each other’s hands. When I opened my eyes, the queen was gone. We were alone in the garden, and it was getting close to daylight. I didn’t want to go inside, but I knew we must. What had begun as confusion and pain had ended up being a collapse of all the walls and armor that we had built up over the months and years. All three of us had done it. Lonny was so involved in his engineering that he forgot he had two husbands. Oberon retreated inside himself at the first sign of trouble, and he never reached out to any of us. I was ready to snap at anybody who looked at me. Queen Cécile turned out to be a marriage counselor, and she did it without saying anything. She got us all together and assumed that chemistry would do its magic. While Oberon looked at the clouds, Lonny got out of his clothes and went airborne. Wait, Lonny can’t fly. Oberon saw Lonny streaking upwards and flashed up to meet him. Lonny can’t fly, but he can jump. Oberon flew up to keep him from falling back to earth. By the time I was in the air, Lonny had the front of Oberon’s pants open and was about to…. No, Lonny reached into Oberon’s pants. His hand disappeared between his thighs… up to his elbow. Lonny got hold of Oberon’s butt and was pulling and exploring. Oberon reacted with a gasp of pleasure. This was all new territory for me because I had never known Oberon to like his ass being treated as a sexual object. The one time I tried, Oberon flung me across a room. He was enjoying whatever was going on inside his pants.

I flashed up and took off Oberon’s shoes and got them to the ground. His pants and shirt were waiting for me when I got back above the cloud. Oberon held his clothes out, hoping that I would take the hint. I did, and my two husbands continued to writhe above the cloud. When I returned, Lonny’s mouth was over Oberon’s dick, and he had a finger up Oberon’s hole. I almost wanted to go find a cell phone with a camera, but I decided to join the group. If Lonny was in the air, it was because Oberon was holding onto him. I came up to help hold Lonny. “Du träumst,” Oberon whispered. “You are dreaming.” “Das ist knorke,” Lonny said. Have you ever been around people talking in some Martian language? I had no idea what they were saying, but I know Oberon well enough to guess that he was telling Lonny to pull his fingers out of his ass or get them chopped off. Wrong again. Oberon grabbed Lonny by the arms and fell back to Earth. I was alone above the clouds. It took a moment for me to react, and I was barely back on the ground to see them zipping into the house at full vampire speed. Their clothes were still strewn about the garden’s main path, so I picked up the mess and headed in. When I got into the bedroom, Oberon had Lonny flat on his back on the bed. Okay, that’s more… no… hold on…. Oberon was putting lube on Lonny’s cock. Lonny has an average tool, maybe a little thicker than usual, and it glistened with lube. This is too weird. As I was about to join them on the bed, Oberon sat on top of Lonny and slowly guided Lonny’s rod into his ass. Mr. Fuck was giving up his virgin ass. It was an amazing thing to watch. Lonny was mostly concerned about not causing pain, but Oberon was on top and in complete control. With Lonny all the way into him, Oberon relaxed a little. He exhaled with a whoosh, even though vampires don’t need to breathe. I could see Oberon trying to get more of Lonny inside him, but there wasn’t any more to give. He could do this. Oberon rolled onto the bed, and Lonny took the hint: missionary position. Lonny was on top of the most top guy I’ve ever known. It was a position I had thought about but that I assumed would never happen. Lonny was very gentle until Oberon used his feet to pull Lonny closer. Oberon wanted to fuck, and Lonny finally got the hint. When I tried to grab Oberon’s dick, I was rebuked. Oberon wanted to concentrate on Lonny or save his cum for later. The pace grew until I could hear Lonny’s ball sack slapping against Oberon’s ass. It wasn’t a pounding, but it was closer than I had ever expected to witness. Lonny began to breathe heavily, and the oxygen was only to supply air to a regular growl that he was making. Lonny built into a crescendo of man-sex. Oberon was getting a load of cum in his ass. “Mmmm,” he said.

“Tierisch,” Lonny added. German with a Texas twang must sound interesting to a native. “Happy birthday,” Oberon said. Okay, Oberon’s ass was a birthday present. We celebrate the date we awoke as a vampire, and I had completely forgotten Lonny’s. My bad. “Danke,” Lonny whispered as they kissed. I closed my eyes and almost started crying as I felt four arms work their way under my body. Oberon and Lonny were lifting me to the middle of the bed. Back on the sheet, Lonny fell to my right side, and Oberon levitated to my left side. They were… no, Oberon changed his mind and flashed down to part my legs as Lonny jumped onto me, straddling my chest. He was on his knees, and his oversized ball sack was just out of reach of my tongue. Somehow Lonny quickly turned completely around, still on my chest but facing Oberon. I looked up and saw my two husbands kissing. No, not kissing… they were coordinating. Lonny moved to enter my mouth at the moment Oberon entered my ass. Lonny let Oberon take the lead but matched him stroke for stroke. Everything I felt in my butt was exactly the same thing that I felt in my mouth. Now they were kissing and kissing hard. Lonny’s arms were around Oberon’s neck, and I was trapped below them. I was their prisoner, and it felt good. Lonny worked his way down Oberon’s chest and stomach until his mouth engulfed my own dick. It was a sixty-nine position, but I couldn’t move. Lonny and Oberon supplied all the motion, and they wanted me to be still. Instead of a real sixty-nine, Lonny was fucking my face while he gave me a blow job. Oberon was building up intensity in my ass. As I felt an explosion of cum from Oberon, I filled Lonny’s mouth with my own load. Uhhhhhh—Lonny’s fangs: he was drinking blood from my cock, and he kept his body in place long enough that I was able to feed from his dick. As my fangs found their mark, I felt both blood and cum in my mouth. I drank as long as the two wounds stayed open, which was about a minute. Vampires heal quickly, but my saliva sped up a process that was already fast by itself. How do we unwind from this? We don’t, for a minute or two. When I felt Lonny try to decouple himself, I put my arms around his waist and held him in place. I wanted to make sure that I got every drop of his blood and cum that was available. When he slid out of my mouth, I licked his rod until I felt it getting hard again. That’s weird. Lonny is happy with one time every day or two, and he had already shot twice within an hour. And he was getting hard? False alarm. He rolled off to my side and came to give me a cum-kiss. He wanted to deliver some of my own sperm from my load. Not my thing, but it was his birthday. “How many years?” I whispered. “Two thousand,” he said. “Wow, you are holding up well for somebody two thousand years old.” “No, Oberon turned me in the year 2000.”

“Happy birthday.” “Thanks, old guy,” Lonny laughed. “How old are you?” “I stopped counting somewhere during the Weimar Republic days.” “You were a math major.” “Right,” I chuckled, “but I only got a bachelor’s degree. You’d have to have some kind of really advanced studies to count my age.” “He’s ninety-one,” Oberon said. “I thought you said you were over a hundred.” “He lies about his age,” Oberon whispered as he pointed to me. “I think it is so he can sneak into bars and get adult beverages.” “You spent too much time in Texas,” Lonny laughed. “There isn’t a drinking age in Germany.” “Sixteen,” I said. “You can buy beer and wine at sixteen,” Lonny said, “but drinking isn’t covered.” “So you are okay if you just steal the beer?” Lonny nodded. “That makes no sense to me. No wonder these guys lost all of the World Wars.” Chapter 17

Chapter 17 “YOU cannot run from God,” Barbiconi said. He had cracked our security again. He had been able to come through a thirty-millimeter (over an inch) sheet of solid metal. The metal bar sealing the door closed did nothing to stop this Roman Catholic cardinal. “We are not trying to run from God,” Lonny said quietly. “We just want you to leave us alone.” “Silence, you unholy monster!” Barbiconi screamed. “You and your gang are an abomination in the sight of God and all that is sacred. You have the foulest sex with each other, and for that you will burn in the endless fires of hell.” “That’s your God’s rules, not ours,” Lonny said. “Stop,” Barbiconi said, “or I will send you to hell tonight.” “Why, because we are gay?” Lonny asked. “Yes, because man must not lie with another man as though he were a woman. Your very lives are offensive. Your vile sexual behavior is disgusting, and you refuse to stop.” “We haven’t harmed you or anyone else,” Lonny said, almost as if he knew that he was baiting the cardinal. “You are pedophiles.” “No, we are not,” Lonny said. “We are gay, but we do not have sex with anyone underage or anyone who doesn’t want it. We don’t do these things, and we condemn anyone who does. If you have any evidence that we have had sex with children or even underage teens, turn it over to the police. We have done nothing, and we will be happy to face any official investigation.” “You disgust me,” the cardinal said through clenched teeth, and he rushed up to Lonny. “You can do better than that,” Lonny said as the cleric pinned him against the table. Barbiconi had his chest against Lonny, resting his hands on the table. It was a threatening position, but Lonny didn’t move. “Call the police,” Lonny said. “See if they will arrest us.” “I do not need police,” the cardinal continued. “You attack children and make them do the most awful things.” “No, sir, we do not.” “And then you murder the children and lie about it.” The cardinal released Lonny from the prison created by his chest and the conference table. “If you have any evidence, tell the police.”

“I will deal with this! I do not need the police. Mark this. You cannot lie to God. You cannot defy his rules, and you will answer for your outrageous behavior.” “If God has any evidence,” Lonny said, “I am sure we will be confronted by it on Judgment Day.” “You are confronted here,” Barbiconi laughed. “Like you confronted us in Tennessee?” Lonny asked. “Certo,” the cardinal said. “I knew you would show your sorry asses in Tennessee.” “How so?” “All I had to do was kill a few people in the same way you kill people, and I knew you would be drawn out.” “We don’t kill people,” Oberon said. “I know what you are.” “What are we?” “Vampires,” Barbiconi said in a whisper. “Vampires? You say we are vampires?” “Sì, vampire,” he said in Italian. “Aren’t they fictional beings?” Oberon continued. “I know what you are,” he continued. “You are vampires, and I knew you would come out to see which vampire was killing the humans in Tennessee.” “How many?” “How many what?” “How many people did you kill in Tennessee?” Lonny said. “Dozens,” Barbiconi said. “I don’t know. They weren’t important.” “Maybe they were to their families,” Lonny whispered. “Isn’t it against the rules for a Roman Catholic cardinal to kill? I mean, isn’t that one of the Ten Commandments?” “The humans were sacrificed to draw you out,” Barbiconi said. “They are martyrs for a good cause.” “According to Rome? According to Barbiconi? Or according to Girolamo Ghirlandaio?” Lonny said. That stopped the cardinal dead in his tracks. Lonny knew the man’s real name, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. “You think you are so smart to know that I am Girolamo Ghirlandaio.” “No, I think it is unusual for you to claim this, because it is the name of someone who lived more than six hundred years ago. Is that your real name?” “Certo,” the cleric said. “Were your parents trying to honor that man from years ago?”

“I am Girolamo Ghirlandaio,” he said loudly. “I was the banker to the family Medici.” “How old are you saying that you are?” “I was born in the year 1106,” he said. “That makes you over nine hundred years old,” I said, getting to use my math major training. “I see your brazen behavior, and I will send you to the very gates of hell because I am the representative of God on earth.” “I don’t think I like your God,” I said. “It seems like you are describing a jealous God.” “Blasphemy,” the cardinal screamed. “The Holy Mother Church represents God on Earth.” “Really?” Lonny asked. “So it would be wrong if we attacked you and killed you?” “You cannot attack me. You cannot kill me. You are like little insects, and I can crush you whenever I want.” “But if we could?” “If you could, then it would be a crime against the heart of the living incarnation of God on earth. You would seal your fate in the eyes of mankind and in the eternal damnation that awaits you on the Day of Judgment.” “Is it just if we kill you?” Lonny asked. “What?” Barbiconi said. “Can we kill other clerics and cardinals, or is it just if we kill you?” “Filth comes out of your heathen mouth. If you attack God, then you are even more doomed than before.” “I’m just trying to find out what the rules are.” “I am the wrath of God. The Holy Mother Church is the living incarnation of God. The Church is the mystical body of Christ, and an attack on any of our clergy would be an assault on the very steps of God.” “So killing the pope would be against the rules?” Lonny said. It left the cardinal without anything to say. He stared at Lonny, and if looks could kill…. “That is vile,” he whispered. “As vile as a member of your own clergy killing the pope?” “Impossible. It would not happen.” “Could the Illuminati kill the pope?” Lonny asked. “What do you know about the Illuminati?” “Nothing. I think that it is a fictional group,” Lonny said. “But the mysterious death of a pope is not fiction, is it?” Barbiconi was speechless again. Lonny let everything sink in, and then he went in for the verbal kill.

“Do you remember hiring Fra Diavolo to murder a bishop of Rome in the twentieth century?” “Fra Diavolo?” “Oui, monsieur,” Pierre said in French. “Fra Diavolo è morto,” the cardinal insisted, trying to get the conversation into Italian. “Oui, Frère Démon est mort,” Pierre agreed, but in French. I was getting seasick with all the language changes. Just as I got my head into Try-To-Friggin’-Translate-Goddamn-French mode, they were off in Italian. The instant I tried to shift gears, they were back into French. If I started hearing any Chinese, I was planning on taking out the entire room or start swearing in Swedish. (Oh yes, I can, too.) “Gud hjälpe mig,” I said, hoping a little Swedish would get everyone back to using English. I said something like, “God help me.” “There is no help for you, only the wrath of God,” the cardinal said. “Alrighty then,” I laughed. “Everybody knows every language. This is good, but could somebody move everyone back to English?” “Fra Diavolo. Un santo martire,” the cardinal said. “A holy martyr,” Oberon told me. “Okay, so English is obviously out of the question?” “What makes him a martyr, other than being dead?” Lonny asked. “Because he was able to rid God’s earth of l’Anticristo,” Barbiconi gloated. “That pope?” Lonny asked. “Sì, that awful pope who would have been the ruin of God’s church.” “How do you know?” “Because I paid him to do it,” the cardinal said. “Reeeeally?” Lonny said. “Fascinating. So you are saying that it would be wrong for us to kill any member of your church’s clergy, but it is okay for you to do so?” “I killed nobody.” “You paid for the killing.” “I did no such thing,” the cardinal said. “You can prove nothing.” “You just said you hired Fra Diavolo to kill your pope.” “He needed to die, and so he is dead, but you cannot prove a thing,” the cardinal laughed. “Do you really expect the world to believe the word of a homosexual pedophile that murders his victims?” “No, not at all,” Lonny continued. “I expect the world to believe you when you admit to what you did.”

Barbiconi laughed deeply and left. Chapter 18

Chapter 18 “THAT went rather well, don’t you think?” Lonny said as he got up from his chair. He quickly got an erasable marker from the marker board on the far side of the conference table. He drew two large circles on top of the table near where he had been sitting. I shrugged. Oberon shrugged. Pierre grinned. Lonny fetched his cell phone and dialed. “Englisch? Darf ich in Englisch sprechen?” he asked. “Wunderv…. Also…. Ja, wundervoll…. Ich kann aber… some people in the room on my end do not speak German, and I want them to know what I am saying…. Ja… thank you so much. I would like to report an attempted murder…. Nein, nein, Mord… Ermordung…. That’s right…. Uh-huh…. Me…. Ich… attempted Mord… versuchter Mord…. Yes, I was the target…. No, he is gone, aber I do not feel safe now…. Okay, danke.” And he hung up. Lonny seriously worked that dispatcher! Very impressive, I think, even though I have no idea what he said in German. Oberon started to get up, but Lonny asked everyone to stay put and not to touch the top of the table. Pierre shrugged. He had no idea what was up. In about ten minutes, we heard sirens getting closer and closer. A few minutes later, one of our human servants appeared at the door with two uniformed officers. Lonny asked them into our conference room and left the door behind them open. They came into the room and stood at opposite ends of the room. I couldn’t tell which officer was in charge. Lonny explained to the officers almost everything that had happened in the room. He didn’t embellish or change anything, and that made me a little nervous. Our conference room was going to be the subject of a police report. The Obscurati is hired to kill vampires who appear in police reports, and Lonny was going to be getting all of us mentioned. What he told them was an astonishing story. He mainly talked in German, but Lonny helped me follow what I didn’t know. I am surrounded by men who have a wonderful talent for language. The story strained my ability to believe what he said, and I was a witness. It sounded crazy, even though I had seen everything he was describing. Lonny said a man dressed like a Roman Catholic prelate had broken into our home without an invitation and had made threats against all three of us. This bishop or cardinal had accused us of horrible sins against God and told us that he was going to send us straight to hell by killing us. Lonny showed the top of the table where the prelate had pinned Lonny against the table. The police were skeptical of the story, but they wrote everything down. Lonny then told the police that the man had confessed to hiring people to kill the Roman Catholic pope back in

the 1970s. That was when the policemen’s patience was about to pop. No church official would ever do such a thing, right? Lonny had no credibility at that point, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to turn things around. Lonny didn’t have to be more specific about the pope because the police knew all about the conspiracy theories. “He pinned me up against the table, and he had both palms on the table,” Lonny said. “I marked the spot.” He pointed to the two circles on the conference table and explained that there might be some usable palm prints of the attacker. We all told the police that it looked like a Catholic bishop or priest. He was wearing a collar and had a golden chain over his neck that disappeared into some inner pocket of the cleric’s coat. “I can’t believe it was a real member of the clergy,” Lonny said, “but that’s what he claimed. It was definitely a threat. He told me that he was going to kill me.” We all nodded. “We managed to get him to delay killing anybody,” Pierre said, “but Lonny is definitely not safe. It was a real threat, and I am sure he intends to carry it out.” Lonny waited for a count of five before he dropped his biggest bombshell. “I have it all recorded on our security system,” Lonny said sheepishly, “if you think that might help.” You think? It was like Lonny had done all their investigation for them. He had provided them with two full sets of fingerprints on the table, and he had recorded the entire threat, including that “confession” of being part of the conspiracy to kill a pope. He pointed to two unobtrusive cameras on the ceiling. I had no idea we had cameras. “We have cameras?” I asked. “Were you going to tell me?” “I just did, kinda-sorta.” “Cute, but….” “There’s a little red light that’s always on when the camera is on,” Lonny said. “I have a microphone hidden in the light,” he said, pointing to one of the recessed lights over the conference table. “There’s also a switch on the wall by the door that lets you disable everything. Not that you’d ever do anything that had to stay secret.” “But still,” I said. The dead pope might finally be getting justice on the human plane. One of the officers used a cell phone to call back to their station. The recording equipment was something they had to take seriously. If there was a recording and a couple of pristine palm prints, they had all the evidence they would need. I’m sure they didn’t expect the threat to be coming from an actual member of the Roman clergy. Maybe they were hoping to add “impersonating a priest” to the growing list of charges.

Barbiconi was busted: check and mate. The police had everyone sit in different parts of the room. They kept Lonny at the table in the chair he’d been in during the attack. I’m guessing that the police didn’t want us to pool our ideas and memories. Oberon, Pierre, and I were as close to actual witnesses as you could get. We didn’t have to cook up a story because we didn’t know anything about Lonny’s deception. If we had thought up the dodge as a group, our stories would have been too identical. Lonny had arranged for everything to be just as the police would expect. The witnesses (i.e., Pierre, Oberon, and me) would all have slightly different stories because we weren’t schooled on the facts. The officers talked among themselves for a while, but they mainly just stood around and waited. Within a half hour, another of our human staff appeared at the door. He was escorting more officers into the room with crime scene equipment. The staff was running something of a shuttle service from the front parking area into the bedroom wing. The crime scene folks dusted the conference table and took several prints. One insisted on getting our prints. Lonny had to translate because she didn’t know English. Almost everyone knows English in Germany these days. I didn’t like giving up my fingerprints, but Lonny said the police wanted to make sure we weren’t accused of the crime. There were pictures from every angle. I was glad that Hamlet wasn’t around because there’d be no end of grief about his hair and clothes. Lonny stayed serious so far as the officers were concerned. At one point he looked my way and gave me one quick wink. He had it all planned. Lonny had set a trap for Barbiconi. It was an intricate trap that involved cameras and microphones to be installed way ahead of time. He had chosen the table because its top held fingerprints nicely, and he made sure the top was always polished when we weren’t in the room. He did everything but chauffer the police to and from our estate. There was plenty of coffee, and I expected a staff member to run out with a tray of donuts. He had played Barbiconi like a musical instrument and then took up a baton to lead the police orchestra in the finale. Very impressive. An hour after the crime scene crew arrived, the police were packing up their gear. Lonny took the officers to the security staff and then left the officers to collect whatever digital recordings they had. We had plenty of everything because Lonny had it planned from the start. Lonny had recorded Barbiconi’s outburst. It really was Barbiconi, and the palm prints would prove it. The Roman prelate wouldn’t have any convenient alibi. He couldn’t, because he really was in Bavaria. Every moment of his threats were caught on the digital recording, complete with a timestamp. Barbiconi confessed to conspiracy in the death of a pope, and he was really clear in his threats toward us. His palm prints put him inside the room, irrefutable

witnesses to the cardinal’s methods. The police left just as the sun was thinking about coming over the horizon. We barely had enough time to crawl into bed. Pierre stayed in the conference room, using the sofa as his bed. Pierre was in as much of a daze as the rest of us.

THE next morning all three of us woke at about the… no, I was late. That’s right. Oberon and Lonny were on the edge of the bed. Oberon was standing, with Lonny’s legs over his shoulders. Oberon was in one of his fuck-moods. It was hard and fast, and I know poor Lonny was feeling more than enough on each stroke. They love each other, but I know for a fact that Lonny likes to make love in a tender kind of way. Oberon was riding our Texan like a horse that needed to be tamed. I almost expected Oberon to start yelling “Yee-hah” before he shot. I moved closer to play with Lonny’s rod, but he pulled it away. He didn’t seem like he was in the mood or something, but he grabbed my hand as I was pulling it back. Lonny held my hand and kissed it, and then he put my palm onto his chest. I could feel Oberon building up for an explosion. When he gets into this kind of mood, he makes guttural sounds like an animal. Oberon held onto Lonny’s shoulders to give himself extra oomph. Ugggh. Ugggh. Ugggh. Ugggh. When his breathing calmed down, Oberon pulled away. I found out that Lonny didn’t reject me. He delayed me. He wanted me to… no, I wasn’t going to fuck him. Lonny wanted to top me. Sweet, what a nice way to start any day. “Did you feed already?” I asked. “Logan,” Lonny said as he nodded. There was a young man sitting off to one side of the room. I didn’t even see him over there. It was my breakfast. He was an adorable young man. Australian accent, or maybe New Zealand. He had light brown hair that curled every which way. Logan also had the most stunning green eyes that I’ve ever seen. They were bright green, like you might see in a cat. I didn’t think a human’s eyes could be so bright. His curls and eyes framed a really wicked grin. He was deeply tanned, and I think he probably would have been happiest with a surfboard or snowboard or skateboard. It was quite a picture, and Logan knew it. He wore shorts but no shirt, the standard attire for our staff during the summer. The young man straddled my legs as he presented his wrist to me. It was an utterly delightful show. “I think he’s smitten,” Oberon said. “Huh?” “Logan. Look at the bulge in those shorts.”

“It was a fund-raiser,” Logan said in his wonderful dialect from the southern hemisphere. “What was?” I asked, almost unable to look away from that charming face and dazzling eyes. “You were,” Logan said. When I looked at Lonny and Oberon, they were both smiling. They were in on this, whatever it was. “We had a lottery to raise money for an orphanage for gay kids. You didn’t know about it?” “No, sorry,” I admitted. “Oops,” Logan said as he pulled away. I stopped him and got him to straddle my legs again. Regardless of who may have played a lottery, I still needed to feed. “What was the lottery?” I asked. “You were, and I won,” Logan said with that wicked smile. If he could read minds, he would know that I was seriously a fan of his. “I won you, but now I feel like a complete jerk because you weren’t part of it. I am so sorry, man. If I had known….” “What made me the prize?” “Well, the winner could have sex with any one of you guys, and I picked you. We had to declare our intention when we paid into the lottery. They said you were all game. Now I guess I was played or something.” I didn’t know what to say, but I was fairly sure that Lonny and Oberon already knew that my blood donor had designs on my ass. “You won?” I asked. “Yeah, but I am so sorry.” “No, I mean, you are very attractive,” I said. “You’re nice. I’d be honored to have you plow my ass. I just… umm… come on, let’s do it.” “Are you sure?” he asked. “I picked you… I mean, you are all adorable, but nobody in the house has ever known you to have sex with them. You keep your pants zipped except for Master Oberon and Master Lonny. I just thought….” I didn’t let him finish. I cupped my hands around his neck and pulled him into a kiss. Lonny pulled off Logan’s shorts, and Oberon worked on the sheets. I sleep in the buff, so I had nothing to remove. Logan was endowed. He was very blessed. It wasn’t quite a beer can, like I’ve had in the past, but he could do things to my ass that I’d remember for a long time. “Lube,” I said. “Lots of lube.” “I’m on it,” Lonny said as Logan turned his attention to my face and chest. Nibbles. Kisses. I felt Lonny making Logan’s dick nice and slick, and Oberon did the same to my hole. I parted my legs and let Logan slide between them. He was very gentle and watched my eyes as Oberon guided his pole into me.

“Ugggh,” I cried. “Holy shit. Sweet mother of….” Logan was wide and really long. I wondered if he was trying to trigger my gag reflex from the bottom side. “Let’s light this candle,” I said after I was fairly sure that I could take him. Logan’s smile became a really wide grin. Gorgeous white teeth. He shook his head a little, making those delightful curls of baby-fine hair bounce. As Logan built up his tempo, he started laughing. The young man was having a nice ride. I tensed my sphincter muscle, and Logan growled from approval. “Oh, man,” he said, “you have no idea what you’re doing to me.” I just grinned as I watched this college kid enjoying himself inside my ass. Maybe I need to put Logan on a list of… no. It’s fun and exciting, but…. Lonny kept reaching to my stomach to get my pre-cum. Logan’s tool clobbered my prostate on every stroke, so there was plenty of juice on my stomach. I was seeing stars. Logan was laughing like it was the greatest ride at a cool amusement park. He was absolutely cute when he laughed. His light brown curls bounced every time his balls slammed into my legs. Those green eyes of his never wandered. He wanted to watch my every reaction, and I had plenty of reactions to his thrusts. Sometimes he would give me an extra thrust, and he’d be looking at me to see if I enjoyed it. I did, and he was pleased that I approved. His dick had a bulge an inch or two down from his tip. The middle of his shaft was the widest part. I was so glad that Lonny got plenty of lube. The pounding that I was getting from this dirigible could cause real physical damage, even to a vampire. Poor guy probably had loads of trouble finding partners because of—ugggh—his size. Gag reflex. Yeah, he was almost long enough to make my throat gag from being gorged in the ass. Logan reached under my waist and pulled me up. I started to float up, but he stopped me. Logan wanted to pull me to just the right place. He seemed to love touching me. All the attention felt really good, especially from such a hot young man. Logan could have any man in Germany, but he wanted me. He didn’t just want me, he paid for me. Does that make me a prostitute? I guess it does. Fortunately, prostitution in Germany is perfectly legal. This was for charity, so I might even get brownie points. Bam. Logan growled, loving the feeling of my ass. Bam. Okay, Logan had my undivided attention. He was building. He slammed and slammed into my prostate, and he looked directly into my eyes. He was looking at me, and he was laughing from pleasure. Bam. Logan was completely enjoying fucking my lights out. Once he got started, there was no hesitation.

There was… oh, he’d better cum… I think… oh, my God… uggh… cumming… oh…. We both came at about the same time. I could tell from his grunts and breathing, but I didn’t feel my ass fill up with sperm. Maybe he didn’t have a lot of liquid. He sure made up for it in the motion. I was so into the moment that I forgot to take his blood. Logan had shot and was relaxing when I pulled him close. I let my fangs dig into his nipple as I held him still with one of my arms around his neck and my other arm around the middle of his back. “Oh, lord,” he screamed. “Oh, man… oh, that’s….” After I counted to twenty, I let my tongue rest on the fang-wounds. Wow. Washboard stomach. The two most wonderful green eyes I have ever seen. More than a large cock. A smile that made me melt. Oh, and when he laughed, I noticed a dimple on his right cheek. His eyes got really big. “Worth the price of a lottery ticket?” Oberon asked him. “Wow,” he said. “Fucking wow. I’m sorry for that language. Thank you so much, Master Mårten.” I just smiled. Lonny handed Logan his shorts, so it was something of a hint that playtime was over. I couldn’t complain. I mean, I could complain… but why? As Logan left, I saw Lonny and Oberon talking. “What’s up?” I said. “You didn’t like it,” Oberon said. “He was a hunk,” I said. “We’re talking porn-star or magazine hunky.” “Then what’s wrong?” Lonny asked. “I like making love to you guys. I’m not being a prude. It isn’t like we have a rule, but… Logan was fun. I’ll have fond memories, but….” They both seemed to understand. Hamlet was in my head before we were dressed. He was screaming about the tabloid newspaper that had published pictures of Fra Diavolo attacking our renovation worker months earlier. He said we were in the news again. This time there were pictures of the police in Rome with Cardinal Barbiconi in custody, although I have no idea how they captured him. Instead of being in simple handcuffs, the police had put the cardinal in a straitjacket with silver chains. Apparently someone was secretly in the know about vampires. Oberon fetched his notebook computer and found the tabloid’s web site. Their online story said the cardinal tried to claim that he was a personal friend of Piero Medici, who had died back in the 1490s. Lonny suggested we pop over to YouTube to see if anybody had uploaded

any video. There was Barbiconi and his golden tooth. He was wiggling inside a straitjacket as the police pushed him into their car. Members of the Swiss Guard were in the background, and the word “Scandalo” was superimposed over the video. Men in plain suits stood around, and I guessed that they were detectives with some Vatican police or guard unit. Maybe they were Italian police working the Vatican with permission of the locals. This was a huge and noisy scandal, and the Vatican wanted to make sure they did everything right. I’m sure there were plenty of people who wanted to bury the story, but it was far too noisy for that to happen. The video showed Barbiconi screaming about diabolical demons in Bavaria. He said his group had been chosen by God to rid the world of such scum. The Italians had launched a full investigation of Barbiconi and the Vatican bank. The Vatican said it would be cooperating with the Italians. If there were pope killers in the Vatican, I’m sure the current pope would want them arrested. There was to be a full prosecution if anybody inside the walls conspired to kill the pope or anybody else. Some Vatican suits said they were shutting down the Illuminati. “I will get you,” he said on the video as he tried to shake free of his straightjacket. “I will hunt you down. I will kill you.” “Hey, he’s talking about us,” Lonny said. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?” I asked him. “Because it wouldn’t have worked,” Lonny laughed. “This guy could get into our minds during the day or night, and we wouldn’t know. I was the only one who knew about the plan.” “Not Pierre?” Oberon asked. “Nope. Just me,” he said with a grin. “How’d you know what to do?” I asked. “I thought the Obscurati needed to bring some light to the Illuminati,” Lonny said with that wide grin of Texas teeth I’ve grown to love. Chapter 19

Chapter 19 “I DON’T know how to start this,” Oberon said. Everyone had left except the three of us. It was time for Oberon to start hunting for man-butt, but he was just pacing back and forth in the big bedroom. He was deeper in thought than usual. Lonny and I were on a leather sofa several meters away, and he was gently stroking my inner thigh. In a flash, Oberon was over at the sofa. He was sitting in lotus position but levitated, so we were all at eye-level. “I love you, Lonny,” Oberon said. He was quiet and serious. What he said somehow made me think that there was a big “but” coming, as in “I love you, but….” “I love you too, Oberon,” Lonny said as he reached out to stroke Oberon’s long hair. Oberon floated back a little so that he was just far enough to be out of reach. Lonny pulled back his hand, trying to understand why Oberon had rejected him. “It’s me, not you,” Oberon told Lonny. “I love you both, but there’s something that I really need to say. I can’t think if we’re all touching.” Here comes the “but.” “I…,” Lonny started to say. “Sex is the only thing I’ve ever been good at,” Oberon said. “I love to fuck. I’d fuck all day if I had enough men.” He paused to think. As he stared off at the wall behind the sofa, I saw a tear starting to glide down one cheek. “Sex feels so good. When I can give pleasure to some bottom, it makes me a whole person. Shooting inside somebody validates who I am. When a man gives up control of his life to me for however long it takes, it is like we have a partnership. It is a spiritual bond. When I cum, the rest of the world goes away. Everything explodes in a concentrated burst of ecstasy. My bottom knows that I have given the most personal thing anybody can give. When I see their eyes roll back out of pleasure, I know that I have a reason for living.” Oberon’s gaze came to rest on the sofa just between Lonny and me. In a hundred years, I had never seen him like this. “What I’m saying is that I need a change,” he continued, but in a whisper. “It isn’t working for me.” I felt a big lump in my throat. He was leaving us. Fuck. “I love you both so much,” Oberon continued. “I don’t want to screw all those other men. I am tired of fucking. What I really want to do is make love to you both.”

Huh? Not leaving? “What I am trying to say is that I am telling you that I want to keep my sex in our relationship. No guarantees, because old habits are probably hard to change. Don’t be angry if I fail to… you know. And I’m not asking you to make any promises to me. I just wanted to let you know that I love you both, and that I’d give my whole life for you. I’ve been really selfish in demanding so much sex over the years. I didn’t see what… I didn’t… I mean, I love you, Mårten. I love you too, Lonny. I want to try to make love to you both and nobody else.” “You don’t need to change the rules for me,” I said. “I am going to try changing the rules, but I’m doing it for me,” Oberon whispered as he took my hand. “You two mean everything to me, and I think sex is a good way of showing that. I think making love to you is… I don’t know the word. It isn’t monogamy, because there are two of you, and ‘mono’ means one. I want to have sex just with you two. I don’t need anybody else. I need both of you guys. I love both of you more than anything in the world.” “I love you, Oberon,” I said. “I love you, Lonny.” “Lonny, you made me see that I really have two husbands. It started as you being my lover’s boy toy, but you are so much more than that. You jumped right in with that Roman Cardinal, and you took him down like nobody else could. Mårten and I would have gotten ourselves killed, but you protected the family. I always liked you, but you made me understand that I love you just as much as I love Mårten. So I need to show that. I need to act like I am part of a relationship… a weird relationship, but a true one. It isn’t just me. It isn’t just Mårten. It is all three of us, and it doesn’t work without us all.” He was right. I had never thought of it in those terms, but he was absolutely right. All these years, I thought I was the “alpha.” Me. I was the glue and the main vampire and the scrappy fighter and the overpriced assassin. Without Oberon to spot targets and to engineer the technology, I couldn’t make a living. Without Lonny to be the mortar between all the pieces, we couldn’t be a family. I’m not the alpha: we all are, equally. Everything changed when Oberon made me understand. Oberon and I both had one of those ah-hah moments. He knew that sex wasn’t just a ticket to get stamped to prove his value. I knew that I didn’t have to be the one in charge of everything. Three men… and we didn’t just fly in close formation. We were three men but one family, all at the same time. Thanks, Oberon. I see it now. The weight of a hundred years melted away. I didn’t feel the extra baggage until it was gone. In an instant I knew that it wasn’t me trying to carry our family alone. A family is a group effort. It made me seem small but complete. I had two vampires in my life, and each loved me. They didn’t want anything from me other than me. Each wanted to contribute to our life together, and each could contribute something quite unique.

We may be the Obscurati, but a simple candle is noticeable in a dark room. Two vampires were equally the love of my life, and it took all three of us to make a whole. I felt stupid for doubting Oberon. I felt petty for doubting Lonny. They each love me and each other. Each of us brings a unique aspect to our ménage à trois. They were ready to accept me for who I am, with all my warts. Maybe I needed to accept them too. The Viking in me was at rest for the first time since I was a child in Texas. The vampire in me was in awe that other people could love me and accept me. Lonny was there to contribute his strengths to our relationship, and he was there to ignore all my frailties and quirks. He overlooked my tantrums. Simply put, we could not have survived Barbiconi without Lonny’s work as an individual. My puffed-out chest attitude would have just gotten everyone killed. What was needed was not my “ready-shoot-aim” approach. It was Lonny working in his own way that had saved all three of us. My life wouldn’t be the same without any one of my men. Why did we all have to come so close to being defeated and killed for me to realize it? “You don’t have to change the rules, babe,” I said, and Lonny agreed. “Yeah, I do,” Oberon said with a grin as he wiped another tear from his face. “I need to do it for me… and for us. I love being in love with both of you. I love making love to you. Once every hundred years or so, you can even top me. At least I will try. It’s what I want. It’s what I need.” “One for all,” Lonny said as he held out his hand in front of Oberon and me. I put my hand on top of his. What I suddenly realized was that Lonny was sitting, lotus position, right in front of Oberon. Lonny was levitating! I mean, holy shit. He had learned how to fly! “You’re…,” Oberon said with the broadest smile I ever saw. There wasn’t a trace of the Goth sulk. Oberon was giddy, maybe for the first time since he was a teenager in Dresden. I could feel him give himself to Lonny, completely and with no reservation. “Lonny, you are amazing,” I agreed. “How’d you…?” “I taught myself,” he said. “Y’all weren’t going to teach me, so I just watched you guys and worked it out for myself. It was hard work, but I got tired of being the odd guy out.” “How long have…?” “Couple of months,” he said. “I work on flying when you guys are off killing bad guys. I’m really fast too.” “We’ll race sometime,” Oberon said. “Not tonight.”

“Can you imagine a three-way above the clouds?” Lonny grinned. “You had motivation,” I said. “That is sooooooo sweet.” “Three-way above the clouds is why I learned how to fly, you know,” he said like the most eager school kid. “One for all,” Oberon said. “All for one,” I said as Oberon put his hand on top of mine. “If you say you are the Three Muska-queers again….” It was the queen, inside our minds. “We’re kind of having a moment here, ma’am,” Lonny said using mind-words. “Destiny and fate often feel the same,” she said, ignoring Lonny for now, “but they are separate lines.” “When do they meet?” I asked. “Look again,” she said. “The horizon,” I said. Oberon and Lonny looked at each other. Lonny shrugged. “Convergence of destiny and fate,” the queen laughed. “Convergence is overrated. It’s a myth. You have to learn how to be yourself with all your strengths and limitations, and you have to give your mates the freedom to have their quirks too.” And with that, we were alone again. It was just the three of us. I couldn’t feel the queen when she appeared in my head, but I certainly felt it when she left. The three vampires of Lechmont Manor were all alone and all together. We stared into each other’s eyes for several minutes. All three of us were sitting in the lotus position, hovering a meter or so off the floor. “Now what?” Lonny asked quietly. “Horizon?” Oberon said with a flick of his right eyebrow. “Maybe we should… you know…,” I said. “I think it’s only fair,” Lonny said as he landed on the floor of the bedroom. Almost at the same time, we all flashed to the back of the house at full vampire speed. In less than two seconds (and at least half that time was to unlock the steel door), all three of us were nude and hovering over a cloud somewhere over Bavaria. No human eyes would have been able to follow us because we were all in a hurry. “Gravity has so been done,” Lonny said as he held both of us. “We don’t need no stinkin’ gravity.” Oberon put both of his legs around my waist. He used his legs to pull me closer. Wait, Oberon was pulling my raging hard-on into his…. Oh, my…. Wow. I mean, friggin’ wow.

I’m not the next of them. I am the first of me.{1} About the Author About the Author

WYNN WAGNER and his husband Rick live in Texas. Texas doesn't recognize their marriage even though it was done by a real priest in a real Old Catholic Church during Mass. God recognizes the marriage even if the state doesn't. "Texas versus God," Wynn says. "I pick God." Wynn is an archbishop and president of the World Conference of Old Catholic Churches and Coadjutor of the North American Old Catholic Church. He has written numerous gay and spiritual books. The author Patricia Nell Warren calls him a "powerhouse in GLBT publishing." Before that, he was a programmer who helped write the tax software used by some of the world's largest corporations. He also wrote Opus-CBCS, a computer bulletin board system that was wildly popular in the 1980s. Opus generated millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS, back when almost nobody was helping fund research or caring for those suffering from the disease. He also wrote a short piece called "HIV: Day One" for those who have just learned they have HIV. Before programming and writing, Wynn worked in radio in Texas and New York. Before that, he was a pimply-faced teenager. Visit his web site at http://www.WynnWagner.com and his blog at http://www.WynnWagnerBooks.com. His Facebook is WynnWagner. Read how Mårten’s story started in Wynn Wagner’s Read how Mårten’s story started in WYNN WAGNER’s http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com Mårten’s story continues in Wynn Wagner’s Mårten’s story continues in WYNN WAGNER’s http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com Also by Wynn Wagner Also by WYNN WAGNER

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com Paranormal Romance from Dreamspinner Press Paranormal Romance from DREAMSPINNER PRESS http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com Paranormal Romance from DREAMSPINNER PRESS http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com {1} Lyrics by Hoobastank, “First of Me”