(banner by Lilly)
Rated PG-13 for violence and occasional language.
A/N: This is a collaboration between myself and coco for the Champagne Challenge #106. Cocostarted the chain of thought by pointing out the look on Mick’s face during Sonata, when Beth asked if he’d ever turned anyone. I’d been mulling over doing something with Mick’s last case before Beth’s childhood abduction, and the two ideas seemed to fit together. So…
From the Case Files of Mick St. John, P.I.: Wrong Turn
I.
Being on the hunt with Beth is—as she once put it—fun. Sure she babbles, and bounces around like a hyperactive puppy, but in the process she misses very little. In fact, sometimes she sees all too much. And then the questions get awkward. Josef may love awkward, but I don’t.
We were talking to Jackson Monaghan, or more specifically, waiting to talk to him, and Beth was all over the room, taking in every detail. Me, I tend to look around, absorb a place quietly. Beth has a different method. She sees everything, she’s got great reporter instincts, but with her you get a running commentary on it all. I don’t mind. It’s just the way she works. Sometimes she spots things, or puts them together, in a way I don’t, or can’t.
I was beginning to agree, we do make a good team.
She’d gotten quite the earful from Emma, apparently. And the conversation turned the one direction I didn’t want it to go. Turning.
Perhaps it was a good thing my back was to her when she dropped that bomb. I’m not sure I’d have wanted her to see my face.
What she said was, “What about you? Have you ever turned anyone into a vampire?”
Maybe she was thinking about Josh, how I’d refused to turn him. Maybe she was thinking about her own future, the way she’d been chattering about Emma and Jackson. Maybe she genuinely wanted to know about the past.
It’s funny, Jackson came in before I had a chance to answer, before I was compelled to lie. But it was still time for the whole sordid mess to flash to the front of my mind. Start to finish in the blink of an eye. Of course, it was pretty easy. I could sum it up in two words.
Marcin Borkowski.
I expect the name means nothing to you. No reason it should. No reason it should mean anything to Beth, either, unless she remembered it from my case files.
She’d seen the name on the file, of course. It was from 1985. It was the one right before the one marked, “Beth Turner.”
II.
Marcin Borkowski pounded on my door one evening in the early spring of 1985. Days were lengthening, and I hadn’t been out of my freezer for very long. I’d had about enough time to throw on some pants and catch a quick snack out of the fridge—even then, I was making do with morgue blood for daily feedings. Sure, I fed fresh when I could get it, but for an evening eye-opener, bottled was fine. Can’t say the microwave did much for the flavor, though. And hey, my friend Josef might have had enough scratch to keep hot running freshies living in, but back then, I was struggling. Living and working out of a combo office/apartment in a third floor walkup whose greatest charm was the fact that the neighbors never stayed long enough to notice that the guy in 3B didn’t seem to get any older.
I lived—and looked—like what I was, a seedy private eye scraping a living off divorce cases and lost dogs, and letting my rich friend pick up the tab for dinner whenever I could. I thought I could see my way through to better nights, though. I was getting a reputation for doing whatever it took to get the job done…and that’s a good thing for a p.i. to have, even if it made the cops suspicious of me.
Anyway, when the knock came I stashed my dirty glassware in a cabinet and headed for the door. I know, not too professional, answering the office door without a shirt, but whoever it was sounded like the matter was urgent. The knock sounded like machine gun fire on the glass. And I didn’t really have the spare cash to replace the door, if he punched through the window. The kid barely waited for me to open up before he bolted inside and rushed over to lower the blinds I’d only just raised.
“They’re after me, Mr. St. John,” he said in a thick accent I couldn’t place and could barely understand. “You have to help me.”
I held out my hands, palms up, to him. “Calm down,” I said. “They’re not going to get you here.” Whoever “they” are, I added to myself, wondering if I’d be calling the guys in the white coats to give my new friend a little R&R at the county’s expense. If he wasn’t crazy, he certainly looked the part. Guess that was my detective sense kicking in, but you get so that description of a subject falls naturally, as though the file were there in your head waiting to be written. Young, not out of his twenties, dark hair unfashionably short, thin to the point of emaciation, pale blue eyes wild. Dressed in ragged jeans, and a stained USC sweatshirt over a t-shirt that, from the fraying around the collar, had seen better days as well. Leather work boots that might have started life as a decent brand, but like the rest of his wardrobe, worn almost past use. Looked like he’d led a rough life, but there was also something about him that said he could take care of himself, under normal circumstances. So whatever was going on, was way outside normal. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it?”
He ignored the “sit down” part, pacing like he wanted to be a moving target. I could tell through the fear stink in his scent that he was exhausted, but he kept circling. I didn’t get much from what he said—half the words were in another language, and while Josef kept telling me to start picking up a few, this didn’t sound like the French or Spanish I’d been planning to start with. I did gather his name, and that he was in danger…
“I heard you’d understand. I heard you—“ he was searching for the English words, and in his agitation it wasn’t coming easy, “—you had knowledge.”
I frowned at that. “Knowledge of what?”
That stopped him in his tracks, though his eyes kept moving. “The vampires,” he said. “Kostan—“
Then there was a crack as the glass of the window shattered, and Marcin clapped a hand to the side of his head, and went down like a ton of bricks, the smell of his blood flooding the office.
I hit the floor almost before he did. I’d learned one or two things in the war, and one was, when the shooting starts, take cover. Even if a bullet couldn’t kill me, they still hurt like hell, and there was nothing tougher than explaining the absence of a wound after you caught a bullet.
A second shot wheeted through the window, and sent a puff of plaster dust dancing out from the wall. It was times like this, I wished vampires had some of the extra powers the novelists give us, because I’d have been real happy to flip the light switch with my mind. Too bad it doesn’t work like that.
I kept my head down for a minute, two. No more festive little holes appeared in the window blind, so I let my medic background take over, and crawled to the side of my fallen guest. There was more blood than I cared to smell, but it was a scalp wound, not fatal. Maybe the glass in my window had deflected the bullet just enough, maybe the shooter, aiming for a silhouette on a blind, hadn’t been quite good enough to make the correction. Maybe his sights were a hair off. Who knows, but the result was that instead of having his brains splattered across my couch, Marcin Borkowski was going to be waking up. He might have a bitch of a headache, but I’m guessing it beat the alternative.
Satisfied he’d live, I took the low route to the door, and eased up to hit the lights. I was hoping the shooter, or his friends, would take his time getting to my front door, and really hoping they wouldn’t realize that I had a back door, too. Because as soon as I could get Marcin on his feet, we were bolting for a safer place. What safer place, I had no idea.
We might not have discussed retainers, but it was looking pretty much like I had a new client. I wasn’t sure if that meant the evening was looking up, or not.
III.
First things first. I shook Borkowski’s shoulder, one hand poised over his mouth, and called out that strange name. “Marcin. Marcin. Are you with me, buddy?”
He groaned, squinting at his hand, covered in rapidly darkening blood, and muttered in some foreign language. Given his name, I was guessing Eastern European. He didn’t sound especially pleased. Go figure.
I helped him to roll over to his hands and knees, and we got ourselves into the other room. He was pretty unsteady, but something about getting shot at is motivational. I grabbed the first shirt I found, then remembered my keys were in the leather jacket hanging in the other room. I signaled Borkowski to stay down—he wasn’t arguing—and slipped back into the office. With the lights out, I should be safe enough. At least until someone kicked in the door. And even then, they might get a surprise.
Keys, wallet, good to go. I helped my new client stand up, and after a quick listen at the door, we were out and heading for the back stairs. A quick glance out the window, and I knew there were men watching the street, so the fire escape was out. If I had to take out someone in the stairwell, I would, but I didn’t hear anyone on the stairs. So far.
I’ll give Borkowski this, groggy as he was, he kept up, and we were down three flights of stairs before anyone thought to try and jump us. He was happy enough to wait behind the dumpster, though, while I brought the Mercedes around.
I didn’t feel easy until we were well away from the building, and out on the freeway. Didn’t spot anyone following. Maybe I was lazy. Maybe I was cocky. But I’d have sworn there was no one behind me.
Marcin was holding his head, and the smell of fresh blood in the car was almost overwhelming. I had to talk to him, but I couldn’t do it in this enclosed space. Besides, Borkowski looked like a man who could use a drink, and we weren’t far from a little blues club I knew well. They might not stock my special brand, but it was dark, and several of the waitresses were…friendly.
I ended up parking out back of Blues Bayou. For a weeknight, the place was jumping, and the music was louder and faster than usual. The dance floor was packed, and any other night, I’d have enjoyed taking time to listen to the wailing sax and the drums pounding a hard backbeat.
After Marcin cleaned up a bit in the men’s room, we found a booth at the back, and I gave the waitress, Cheryl, the high sign. There are some perks for being a regular. She was over with a pair of scotches at once, and that smile of hers that said she’d give me a lot more than a drink, if I wanted it. I sipped my drink. Marcin took his in one gulp. Then leaned back against the back of the booth, his eyes closed. That was fine, he’d had a rough night, but we needed to talk.
“We should be safe here for now,” I told him, pitching my voice to be heard over the music. “So what’s the story?”
“It’s hard to know,” he replied, speaking slowly, “who is safe to talk to.” He eyed me, as though wondering if I were human or not, and I took another slow sip of my scotch. Maybe he was misinformed about a few things, but he seemed to take it as reassurance.
“Here’s the deal. You used two words I can’t ignore,” I said. “And I can’t help you unless I know why. Talk to me.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“How did you get my name? Someone must’ve recommended me,” I said. “That’s as good a place to start as any.”
He looked around him, and leaned a little closer. “In a way. The men who are following me…when I found they were not my friends…they mentioned you. They said you were a way to get to him.”
“To who?”
“To Josef Kostan. They want to kill him.” A song ended, and there was a burst of applause.
I kept my face still, waiting for the noise to die down a bit. “And you don’t?”
Marcin looked horrified. “I want to…find him, yes. Harm him, never. I came to America to find Josef Kostan.”
“Why?” I let the question out as hard and flat as my voice would go. “You have to tell me why.”
Marcin fingered his glass like he could use another drink. “I was told, if I could find him, he would help me.”
“He’s not really in the business of helping—“ I stopped myself before I said humans and made it “people.” All the sudden I wanted to ask a dozen questions, but I’ve figured out over the years in this job that sometimes you get more if you just wait. So I bit back everything else, said, “Tell me your story,” and signaled the waitress for another round of drinks.
“It’s hard to know where—what—“ he took a deep breath, thinking. Editing in his head. He seemed to reach some kind of decision, then he looked me in the eye and said, “If you are a friend to Josef Kostan, shake my hand and tell me so.”
So far I’d managed to avoid touching him, skin to skin. It’s a little trick vamps learn. Except with the humans who feed you, or the ones you kill, you never let them feel the cold that rides your skin. I didn’t think Marcin fell into either of those categories. But there was something in his eyes…so I took the hand he had stuck out. “Josef is my friend,” I said.
I’ve gotten pretty good at reading people, over the years. Some of it has to do with my special abilities, some of it is just experience. And what I saw on Marcin Borkowski’s face, underneath the first expression of shock, was that I’d confirmed something. He nodded several times, and then said, “Yes. I will tell you my story.”
The waitress came weaving back through the crowd with our drinks, and I slipped her a little extra. She’d had the bartender pour them with a heavy hand. Good girl.
Marcin downed most of his drink, in a rush, but he still didn’t start right away. He chewed his lower lip a little, took a deep breath or two. When he began to speak, his words were simple, but the story was—I don’t know what I expected. Not this. “I was born in a small city near Gdansk—the name would mean nothing to you. My family—we were workers. Poor, like everyone. My grandfather lived with us. When I was a child, he used to tell me stories. All the old—what is it in English?—folklore. It made my father angry. He said it was wrong for my head to be filled with nonsense, that the old ways were gone. But my grandfather told me, there was more truth in the old stories, than my father knew. That the docks and the factories were real, but so were other things. And when he got sick, he kept telling me the stories. He told me his life. How as a young man, before the war, he’d worked for a man of wealth and power, a man who had secrets. A man who had been forced from Poland, forced to flee Europe, when the Nazis came. How he’d helped this man escape, and how he’d been given a promise. He gave a promise of his own, too, never to tell anyone what he knew about this man. For forty-three years he said nothing. Not even to my grandmother, not to his only son. Waiting. Hoping. But he prepared me, for this secret, and when he knew he was dying, when he knew his time was short, he told me.
He told me, after he was gone, to go to America, and find Josef Kostan.”
“And why do you think you can tell me this?”
Marcin smiled, and even in the dimness, it made his thin face very different. “Because I can tell you are as my grandfather said Kostan is. A vampire. And I think you are a friend of his. ”
I looked in his eyes, and took a deep breath, laying a hand on his shoulder. From his scent, from his pulse, I only sensed truth. Marcin believed.
And that meant I needed to do what he wanted. Take him to Josef.
“Stay here,” I told him. “I’ve got to make a call.” I started to slide out of the booth.
He put out a hand to me, laid it on my arm. “There’s more,” he said. “Kostan is in danger.”
That stopped me. Suddenly the music, the noise in the club faded into the background of my consciousness. “What do you mean?”
“It’s my fault. When I got to New York, I had no idea how to go about finding him. This is a big county. I asked questions, I knocked on doors. And somehow, people—the wrong people—found out I was looking for him. They decided I was a way in. They promised their help, but they want to kill him.”
“Who are they?”
“When I discovered their intentions, I thought they were just human vampire hunters.”
My expression must have changed, because Marcin twisted his mouth in a sardonic smile that made him look years older.
“Remember where I am from, Mr. St. John. In my homeland, such things are not fiction, but history.”
I recalled a few comments Josef had made over the years about torch-bearing mobs. I’d always assumed he was exaggerating. Maybe not. “But you found out they were more than that?”
Marcin shrugged. “Rich men make enemies…and your kind, make very long-lived enemies.” He drained the rest of his drink. “From my grandfather, I knew certain—signs, to look for. But I told no one, when I knew. It was only today, when I thought I was so close to finding him, that they realized. And I became a threat to them, to their plans.”
I stroked a hand over my face, feeling the beard stubble I hadn’t had a chance to shave. Something wasn’t adding up. I didn’t doubt Marcin’s story, but…I was starting to feel like a Judas goat. “How did you get away from them?”
He looked puzzled for a second, then saw what I was driving at. “I was in a room…I heard your name. They said, they said they thought they’d found another way. That I was expendable. I went out a window.”
Too easy. It was all too easy. He hadn’t escaped, he’d been let go. The shot hadn’t missed, it had done what it was intended to do. And I’d taken the bait and run. Just not straight to Josef, as they expected. There was a very real possibility that Marcin and I were the back-up plan, anyway. That phone call had just gotten more important. “You stay here.”
There was a pay phone outside the mens’ room. Not too private, but it would have to do. At least the door was thick enough to filter out most of the noise. I fished a quarter out of my pocket, and dropped it in the slot. Private eye 101…always carry phone change. It rang five times, and I was beginning to think he wasn’t home, when the pickup came. “Joz’ef. Listen, I think we need to talk.”
“Mr. St. John? Isn't Mr. Kostan with you?” I recognized the voice. Jake Reynolds, Josef’s head of security. Competent man, usually. But right now, not who I wanted to hear.
“What do you mean? He’s not there?”
“No, sir. He said he was going to your place. About an hour ago. Maybe an hour and half.”
Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I tried to force a laugh. “He’s probably off with one of his girls.”
A man brushed against me in the narrow hallway, heading for the can. He murmured something, and I almost missed Jake’s response. “—he always tells us that, Mr. St. John. Says his skin is more important than his sins. What’s going on, anyway?”
“Look, Jake, if you hear from him, tell him to get somewhere safe and stay put. I’m not sure, but I think…someone’s trying to kill him.”
“Someone’s always trying to kill him. But we’ll go into lockdown here.”
“Thanks, Jake. If I find out anything more--”
“You bet, Mr. St. John.”
I hung up, and turned around to find Marcin coming down the hall, his face tight. Looked like the man behind him had a gun.
And when the door to the mens’ room opened behind me, and I felt something in my back, I realized the night was just getting better and better.
IV.
So the situation had gotten fragile. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about a man with a gun. Even two. But I did have some scruples about getting Marcin shot. Especially if Josef had been grabbed. Besides, it’s bad form to let a client die. Tends to have a negative impact on future clients.
Anyway, the guy behind Marcin reached back and twisted the lock on the hall door. Cozy.
My guy prodded me with his gun barrel. Yeah, I was going to feed that baby to him, real soon. They put Marcin next to me, both of us facing the wall, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a quarter dropping, numbers punching in, on the pay phone behind us.
“Hey, we’ve got ‘em.”
One thing about vampire hearing, it sure makes eavesdropping easy. But you know what they say about that—you never hear anything good. I could hear not only the boss of these thugs, but the violence going on in the background. Sounds of pain, in Josef’s voice. I’d told him before, one of the drawbacks of numbered accounts, is that people will try to beat those numbers out of you. He always says that I’m just jealous, because the only number associated with my bank account is the balance, and that’s usually zero.
What the voice on the other end of the line was saying, though, was more to the point. “We’ve got Kostan. Kill those two and get back here.”
I looked at Marcin, trying to assess his readiness to act. If we let these goons take us out back of the club, the shit was only going to get deeper. Marcin gave me a bare nod, then suddenly dove for the floor, curling up in a ball as he went, to hit the legs of one of the goons and throw him over backwards, while I whipped around and clubbed the gun out of the guy’s hand with a forearm block..
There was a sharp crack, and I felt a bullet hit me in the back, but it didn’t slow me down. They never do. Still, that’s when I made my biggest mistake. As I turned and grabbed the son of a bitch to break his neck, he got off another shot. Two. The first went wide, burying itself in the wall, but I heard the thud of the second one striking flesh.
It was time to stop messing around. I broke one neck, and hoped against hope he’d taken care of the other one for me, but no such luck. I had to kill that guy, too. And I made short work of it. Marcin was lying still, but his heartbeat was strong. So wherever he’d been hit, it wasn’t fatal.
Meanwhile, it was time for us to be leaving. No one was pounding on the door from the club, so I had to guess the music out front had covered the shots. The bass thump of the drums was still going steady.
I’d been fine with parking out back, it was more inconspicuous. The vintage Mercedes is a sweet ride, but even in L.A. it’s a little recognizable. It only took a moment to disable the alarm on the exit door—I really should give the owner a tip that he needed to upgrade—and ditch the bodies in the dumpster. I was hoping that would buy me enough time to call the Cleaners, before the cops found them. Then I helped Marcin up.
He was holding his side, pretty hard, but I didn’t smell a lot of blood, and assumed the wound wasn’t life-threatening.
“Can you get us back to where you escaped?”
“I don’t know the streets. The way. But I know the name of the street with the warehouse. And I can find it from there.” His voice was strained.
“Let’s go.
Being a native Angeleno, I like to think I know this city as well as anyone. I spend a lot of night hours cruising the streets, soaking in the city’s pulse. It’s getting harder every year to keep up with the new growth, but give me an address in the old part of town, like, say, the warehouse district, and I’ll get you there as fast as anyone. Guaranteed.
Tonight, I had good reason to hurry, and it may sound strange, but the fastest way to get where we were going involved a short cut right through the heart of Elysian Park, right by Dodger Stadium. Yeah, the road winds like crazy, but there are fewer traffic lights, and for a guy with really good reflexes, you can make up time there.
I was busy paying attention to driving, because police involvement was close to the last thing I needed, and I hadn’t noticed that Marcin was getting quieter and quieter.
We were in the park when he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and started coughing. Started spraying a fine mist of blood all over the interior of the Mercedes.
He was dying. And there was fuck-all I could do about it.
It didn’t help that I’d taken a bullet myself. And even if the wound had closed, it put me in need of blood. Any blood would do.
V.
Marcin coughed again, and the stink of blood filled the car. I pulled off the road and stopped the car, in a little clearing surrounded by stands of waving bamboo. It was a nice private place, to live or die. Elysian Park…it was too damned ironic. But right now, I had to get away from that blood smell, before I exploded. Lives depended on it. Josef’s life depended on it.
I raced around the car, and threw open the passenger door, hauling Marcin out into the cool night air. My medic training was coming back, the steps for treating bullet wounds so ingrained, that my hands moved without conscious thought, applying pressure to the bubbling wound. He was slipping away, right before me, and I had no way of knowing where to find Josef.
It was like a red mist fogging around me. I grabbed him by the shoulders, started shaking him, yelling into his face. “Marcin, dammit, tell me where they took him! Tell me!” It was no use. He was out. And fading.
I’d always said I’d never take the choice from someone, the way it was taken from me. For thirty-three years, I’d raged against the vampire inside, and cursed my condition. Now, I was at a crossroads. Marcin was dying, and if he did, he would take with him my last chance to find Josef. I didn’t have hours or days to think this over, to reason it out. It was Josef, my mentor, my friend, the one who had pulled me back from the brink of madness more times than I could count…or Marcin, who had come into my office a couple of hours ago. And who was dead no matter what I did. He’d bled out so much, internally, that I didn’t need to drink from him. I don’t know if that makes it better, or worse.
I ripped off my jacket, and pulled back my sleeve. It hurt like hell when I sank my fangs into my forearm, but I bit down, and tore the wounds to make sure they bled freely. Cradling Marcin’s head in my unwounded arm, I held my wrist to his mouth.
“Come on, buddy, come on,” I urged. “Drink, dammit.”
I heard the faintest of moans, as the blood dripped into his mouth, and hit the back of his throat. Then he began to shudder, and his hands hit my wrist, tried to push it away even as he sucked harder, swallowed.
I’d never felt the pull of blood out of my arm that way before. It’s nothing you can describe. And it’s nothing I want to remember. I had to drag my arm away from him, not really knowing what would come next.
Marcin convulsed with the pain of his wounds healing, but it was over in a matter of seconds. I had my hand on his chest, holding him in place, and felt his heart flutter one last time, and die. Yet his body continued to move. I saw him in the darkness, looking up at the night sky, his mouth working in an agonized, soundless cry.
He was turned. He was vampire.
And he was by God going to help me save Josef.
We’d deal with everything else, later.
VI.
Back in the car, as we covered those last couple of miles to the warehouse district where I prayed we’d be in time to rescue Josef, I kept thinking I had the makings of a catastrophe on my hands. Going up against an unknown enemy, one with enough smarts to grab the most powerful vamp I knew, and me having to watch out for the untried fledgling at my back.
I hadn’t been around many fledglings. Actually, I hadn’t been around any fledglings. It was something I avoided. Bad enough I had to live this way, without watching others fall into the darkness.
I remembered the hunger, though. A gut-twisting need, that only blood could ease. I tried to keep an eye on Marcin. He was alternating between staring out at the night like a blind man who can suddenly see, taking great gulps of air, reveling in his new vampire senses, and doubling over as the thirst hit him, his pale blue eyes gone paler yet, his new fangs thrusting into his mouth. Yeah, I remembered how that felt, all right.
And then he’d look at me as though I had some magic power to take away the pain. I’d looked at Coraline that way, hating her for causing it, begging her to make it stop. By that time, it was too late to beg, but I hadn’t known that then.
I felt sick. After all my self-righteous superiority, I was no better than Coraline, turning this man without his consent. At least she’d had the excuse of wanting an eternal lover by her side. I’d be paying for this for a long, long time.
Marcin jerked me back to the present with a tap on the shoulder. “It’s just up here,” he said, pointing at a warehouse I couldn’t have distinguished from half a hundred others.
“You sure?”
He nodded his head. It would have to be good enough. I pulled over.
I took a minute to pull a sheathed machete from a hiding place under the front seat, and hooked it to my belt. Got a couple of stakes, too. I had a feeling guns wouldn’t be any good against what I was pretty sure I’d find inside. Marcin’s eyes got big, but he kept his mouth shut.
“You listen to me,” I told him, hating what I was about to say. “I’ll handle any vamps in there. Marcin, I want you to wait outside until you hear me yell for you. Any humans come out, they’re fair game. Catch ‘em, and feed. You understand?”
He nodded again.
“Tell me you understand. Say it.”
His voice was thick, distorted by his fangs. “”I understand.”
I clapped him on the shoulder, and turned away to go up the wall like a spider, the machete banging against my leg at every step.
I’d learned a long time before that the best way to get the drop on someone was from above. No one ever looks up.
The skylights were dirty, coated with years of grime that the infrequent rains of Los Angeles could not wash away. Funny thing about skylights, though, there was almost always at least one unlatched. In this case, several had been cranked open. Must’ve been the humans. I didn’t spare it a lot of thought, though. I was too busy fighting down the blind rage that was sweeping over me.
Josef was down there, and I wasn’t sure he was still alive, until I saw him flinch. He hung limp, his weight suspended by his blackened wrists, shackled with silver-plated cuffs. I could smell the burns from here. More than that, he was naked, and it looked like the only reason he wasn’t more damaged was that they hadn’t had him for very long. As it was, there were unhealed cuts all over his torso, and the stink and the blackened edges told me that silver had been involved there, too.
His torturers were very organized, I’ll give them that. A human was sitting at a table laid out with an array of horrific implements, pad and pen ready to take down whatever the two vamps doing the questioning managed to wring out of their victim. As I watched, one vampire, a tall thin man with short black hair, was wielding a nasty-looking whip on Josef’s back, while the other, a stocky blond, spoke softly and persuasively to Josef in rapid French.
I don’t speak the language, but I thought I picked up the words Cayman Islands, and something that sounded like number. This was about money? Hell.
About then, Josef lifted his head and snarled in the blond vampire’s face. I could see from my vantage point that he was fully vamped out, and knowing his iron control, it told me just how bad the situation was for him. I watched the whip rise and fall, the silver-wrapped leather of the lashes deep red with blood.
Then the blond stepped closer and whispered something in Josef’s ear, and seemed almost to caress his naked chest. As he did so, I saw a thick line of red spring up, the cut running straight across his left nipple. And Josef howled.
It was time to take these guys out.
No reason to take the long way. I was in through the window before the last of that scream died, dropping like the wrath of God on those lice. I hit the floor in a three point crouch, and was up with the machete drawn almost before anyone realized I’d hit.
The blond was closest, and I engaged with him, flashing the machete toward his neck. He threw up an arm to counter, howling in pain as the blade bit into his bone. By the time I wrenched it free, the other vamp had rushed around to take a cut at me with the whip. Even through my coat, I could feel the heavy sting of the lashes, the poison silver ripping through the leather.
I turned around and grabbed at the whip, ignoring the pain in my hand, and took the dark vampire’s head off with a backhanded stroke of the machete, roaring as I did so. His head went rolling toward the table, and the human scrambled back away, his chair flying out behind him.
It was time for the fledgling to help. “Marcin!”
Grappling with the old vamp—and I could tell by the stink of decay in my nostrils he was an old one—I was too close in for the machete, and I let it fall, concentrating on making sure blondie didn’t nail me with the silvered razor in his good hand. As we struggled, he was smart enough, and fast enough, to hook a foot behind my ankles and sweep my feet out from under me. I went down, but I wasn’t letting go, and he came along for the ride, paled-out eyes and snapping fangs up in my face. Can’t fault him for that, I was doing the same. We rolled together on the floor, fighting for dominance. At one point, I was distracted by a drip on my face, and glanced up to see Josef’s body hanging above us like some kind of bleeding vampire crucifix. I couldn’t tell if he was even conscious.
Somewhere in there, I was aware of Marcin coming in, a body balanced awkwardly in his arms. He must’ve caught a human coming out of the building, and the guy’s misshapen face told me Marcin hadn’t thought to pull his punch; the jaw looked shattered.
“The other human,” I gasped to Marcin as my opponent clawed across my face. “Dammit, you fight like a girl,” I growled to the vamp above me. Okay, the girl I had in mind was my ex-wife, Coraline, so it wasn’t really an insult.
Marcin did a better job of cornering the record keeper, cornering him easily, without ever dropping the body in his arms.
Meanwhile, I’d had enough. I threw the vamp over and pinned him to the floor with my weight and a strategic forearm across his neck. Fumbling in my jacket pocket, I grabbed one of the stakes I’d brought with me, and found that sweet spot in-between his ribs to slide that sucker right into the bastard’s heart.
I sat back from the now-paralyzed vamp, wiped a hand across my face, and looked over to Marcin. He was a mess.
With the conscious human cowering away from him, he clutched the other body like some obscene parody of a mother and child. He’d fallen to his knees, and he was fighting what he wanted to do, what he had to do, and what clearly he feared to do.
He looked up at me, pleading. “What do I do?”
I could feel his hunger riding on the air around him, and my lips peeled back from my own fangs. There was only one answer to his question. “Feed.”
With a noise like a strangled sob, he opened his mouth wide, and plunged it against the throat of the human in his arms. I knew when the blood began to flow, I could smell the rich velvet iron of it. And I could see him taking monstrous gulps, his eyes wide at the wonder of the taste.
Blood is everything.
Maybe I should’ve gone to Marcin, steadied him through that first feeding. But I had other things to attend to. Standing up, I grabbed Josef around the waist, taking his weight off his wrists, and growled for Marcin to leave the meal he was making a mess of, and come help me. His shirt was covered in blood, the bright red of it making my own fangs ache, but he left the body and came to me.
The human was about drained, anyway.
Between the two of us, we got Josef disentangled from his bonds, and I lowered Josef’s limp body to the concrete floor. Getting the silver cuffs off him was more of a problem, but I was able to pull the sleeves of my leather jacket over my hands and still get enough of a grip to twist them apart.
Josef rolled his head back and forth a time or two. “Mick,” he whispered. “What took you so long?”
I grinned down at him. “Well, shit, Joz’ef. I made a wrong turn on the way here.” I paused, looked around me. “Hang on, buddy, we’ll get you fixed up.”
I regret a lot of things in my life. Dragging that cowering human, the one who’d watched them torture my friend, over to be a meal for Josef, isn’t one of them.
By the time he’d finished draining the worthless son of a bitch, Josef was obviously feeling much better. It would take a day or two for all the damage done by the silver to heal, but he’d be all right. I knew it as soon as he sat up, rolled the body aside, and commented, “That’ll teach him to ruin a five thousand dollar suit.”
Then he looked around, and noticed Marcin, huddled on the floor, overcome with everything. “Who’s your new pal, Mick?”
I went over and squatted by Marcin, putting a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me with wild eyes. “What have you made me?”
I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I just said, “Come on, there’s someone you ought to meet.” The introduction was simple enough. “Josef Kostan, Marcin Borkowski.”
Josef looked a little puzzled. “Should I recognize that name?” he asked, then looked thoughtful. “Wait a minute. Are you Wladislaw Borkowski’s son?”
Marcin shook his head. “Grandson. My father was Józef Borkowski.”
Josef nodded, and got slowly to his feet, extending his hand. “Grandson,” he said. “ Time flies. Welcome to America, Marcin.”
The offered hand was taken, but there was a sick look in Marcin’s eyes that I knew from my mirror. I’d saved Josef, but the price was high.
And I hated to break up this meeting, but we had one piece of business left. I touched Josef on the elbow to get his attention, then handed him the machete. “I thought you might want to finish this.”
Josef glanced down at the machete, and his smile was a chilling as any I’d ever seen. “Oh, yes,” he breathed. “It would be my pleasure.”
I thought he’d just make a quick stroke of it, but then again, this was Josef, and he’d been badly handled. He walked over to the staked blond vamp, and prodded him with the tip of the machete.
“Charpentier,” he said, drawing out the name, “it looks like you’ve lost the game. Again. Whatever shall we do with you?” He started jabbing the blade in, making his points. “You’ve lost the money.” Jab. “You’ve lost the power.” Jab. “You’ve lost your chance to take me out.” Jab.
I started to tell Josef to get on with it, and not play with the guy, but decided he was entitled. And it wasn’t like Charpentier, whoever he was, didn’t deserve it. I kept my mouth shut. Josef was almost done, anyway.
Josef put the blade across Charpentier’s neck, and leaned hard as it sliced through muscle and bone, while Marcin turned away, shoulders heaving. “Mick, get on the phone and call the Cleaners, would you? And have them put it on my tab.”
VII.
“Today.” There was absolutely no room for debate in Marcin’s declaration. I’d talked him through a month of nights, but every night it had gotten harder to justify his continued existence. Or mine, for that matter.
“How?”
He shrugged. “I built a bonfire in the desert. A—what do you call it?—a pyre.” He laughed, and it sounded bitter to me. “A pyre for a vampire. Fitting, yes?”
All I could do was nod. Truth be told, I was more than half tempted to join him. A month of trying to justify my own parasitic existence, and convince myself that turning someone—anyone—was ever acceptable. I’d railed for decades about my own choice being stolen. Mourned my lost humanity, clung to it even as I acted like the monster I was. And without the courage this man, this vampire, before me had shining in his pale blue eyes.
But the thought of the fire—“Isn’t there an easier way?”
“Nothing so sure. Or so pure.” He paused. “I’ve seen it done, my friend, and it’s quick. The pain does not last. Unless you would care to take my head for me?”
I looked at the vampire I had sired. He might be an unwilling turn, and I might be an unwilling sire, but the idea of killing him revolted me. I could only shake my head. No.
He didn’t stay long. His affairs were in order, there was no one to notify. Simple. Neat. Tragic.
I had run out of ways to protest his decision. Hypocrisy has an ugly taste. Maybe worse than blood.
In the end, I embraced him, my fledgling, perhaps the only son I would ever have. And then I let him go.
I kept a vigil far into the day. I was thinking that the bond between sire and fledgling might tell me when he died, but there was nothing. Just the void, stretching out to infinity.
I never saw Marcin again. I closed the file, put it in my cabinet with the other petty matters I’d dealt with professionally, and waited for the next divorce, the next lost dog. I remember feeling as though I were standing on some brink, that something, somehow, would change the direction of my life, but maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe I was still looking for a justification for going on.
After awhile, Marcin Borkowski was just a name typed neatly on the label of a manila file folder. The one right before a missing child case. A child named Beth Turner.
Excellent work, Lucky and coco!!!! 
. And it's so nice to see the boys fighting like h*ll, even if Joz'ef took a couple of licks in the process. 
