The House at the Top of Briggs Road

"You can't be serious."

"I am." He arched an eyebrow. "It is a lot for you, I know. These are things you've always been taught as legends, or myths... as lies, regardless. But behind every fable lies truth, Mr Turco. And we are the truth." He leaned forward with a strange intensity crackling behind his face, then pulled his lip upward in a hideous sneer. Despite myself, I cried out and crouched low, my gun suddenly out of my pocket and wavering toward the strange, malevolent being before me...

But he just smiled, looking curiously at the revolver shaking at the end of my arm. "I assure you, that would do nothing to me," he told me quietly, squinting at the muzzle. ".38 special? No. Perhaps a .44 magnum would knock me down, but unless you had very unique ammunition and hit me very precisely, you'd just piss me off." He curled his lip once more. "Get up, Mr Turco; there's no cause for alarm. I was just showing you my rather abnormal orthodonture."

I peered up in the bluish light, surrounded by the smells of wet grass and earth, and I saw that his mouth did, indeed, sport a needle-sharp pair of fangs, now peeking out over his lower lip. I shook, the gun bouncing. He glanced at it calmly. "Put that away. You're in no danger from me."

I wavered, then saw that he had extended one of those sharp-fingered hands down to me. I wasn't sure whether he wanted my hand, or my gun, but I opted for the former. My Lucky jeans were wet where I'd knelt in the grass as he helped me up, the house casting a cold moonshadow across us. "Thanks," I managed, batting at my knees.

"We have a way of striking terror into mortals," he sighed. "Occupational hazard."

I stared hard, remembering those teeth. "You... you're really... I mean, you're a vam..." I couldn't get the word out, but he just smiled that thin smile of his.

"Your word, Mr Turco, not mine. Your society... this society." He gazed around him and shuddered. "We were supposed to be better over here in this New World. That's what Locke always claimed it would be at Oxford so long ago." I just gaped, and he shook his head. "I know. You have no clue, Mr Turco. I am what my people called a lamia, though it's confusing; it was a feminine word, but most of us are men." He sighed. "Succo, sometimes, that's another thing they called us so long ago, as my empire collapsed. Millow's folk had no real word for us, but wearh comes closest. Zondervan's people called him a bloedzuiger, I think, but by then I do believe that 'vampire' had, indeed, become the term of choice."

I knew I was gaping, pale, speechless. His pronunciations had made little sense to me, uttered flawlessly. Fluently.

"It's okay," he went on carelessly, his rock-slide voice quiet. "I can tell you the truth. You don't truly believe it. You are a child of a rational age." He shrugged. "But, again, it is necessary that you believe what I am saying, at least a little bit. So that you understand what I require of you."

I tried to start waking again, faltering. "I... what is that? I mean, what do you want me to do?"

"Almost two thousand years, I've been alive. Some of that has been mortal, most has not. And my heart has felt differently over all those years, all those centuries." An animal skittered past in the bushes beside me, the hairs rising on my neck. Squirrel? Skunk? Hellhound? I thought of those fangs again.

"You traffic in lust, Mr Turco, in the simulacrum of love. But have you ever felt love yourself?"

"I..." I frowned in the night, the rain lifting once more, very aware of the night-sounds and the smells about me. "I have."

"No." He sounded sure. "If you had, you'd not have hesitated." He sighed and paused, staring down off the back of the hill into some woods, down there where I could hear running water almost moating the hill. "Twice, Mr Turco. In all that time, all that life, all that death, all those centuries... only twice have I felt love."

I held my tongue, feeling sure he had more to say, but my mind whirled. Almost two thousand years, and only two women?

"I hear your thoughts, my friend," he stirred. "No. I have fucked many, many more than two women. Many times many. Thousands?" He frowned. "I'm not sure it's possible to count all those snacks. But no. I speak of love, Mr Turco, not of lust. Of the heart, not of the flesh. Twice only. Once a humble whore in Rome, on the day of St Valentine so, so many years ago." I gazed at his face in profile, a smile spreading wistfully. "Fervena was her name, and I loved her with the pure white-hot love of the Roman sun." He hesitated.

"And, um, the other?" I felt he needed the prompt.

"The other." He turned back to me, slowly, his feet seeming not to move over the sodden slope. "The other, Mr Turco, I fell in love with this morning."

"Wait. What?" I blinked. Was this guy serious? "Two thousand years, and you fall for some chick this morning?"

The smile stayed, though, his eyes far away. "You crave things, Mr Turco, after so long. Not food, nor wine. I've tasted the best of both. Not comforts, nor the sight of the sun rising over mountains, nor of the moon over a river." He sighed. "I lost Fervena when I was made a vampire. She died before I understood what had happened to me, what I could and could not do with my powers." He sighed. "I could have her with me now, but I do not. I regret that every day. Think of that."

My throat had gone dry. I couldn't even come close to thinking of anything like that.

"From the day she died until this morning, Mr Turco, I have sought for another like her. Nobody has come close until now." I kept silent. I was dreading what he was going to ask me to do; I could feel his requirement pursuing me, a pair of evil feet dogging me. "Nobody. And now I do not intend to let it happen again."

I cleared my throat with some difficulty. "You want me to..."

"I want you to help me." He sighed. "For two million dollars, I want you to find this woman. I want you to bring her to me before All Hallows, before the 31^st. I want her."

My mind spun, thinking of the money. The ease. The speed with which my lawyer could put everything behind me... plus half a million in capital! I pondered, nodding, thinking of my five lost whores. "You want her... for what?"

"I love her, Mr Turco." As if that explained everything. The rain started to patter again, and against my better judgement I pressed.

"By Halloween?" My cock lurched when I thought of Rita. "Like, instead of any other girl?"

"This woman," he replied solemnly, "is beyond all price. She will more than suffice."

My conscience gave one final gnaw. "But what are you going to do with her?"

He stopped then, leaving me to trudge on a couple more steps before I turned to face him. His face in the cloudy moonlight showed a feral, unsettling grimace. "Shall I find another pimp, Mr Turco? I'm sure Mr Clymer might want this opportunity?"

I hesitated. "In one breath you warn me not to follow the example of your... Albert? The Prague guy?"

"Halbrecht." The correction came out of the night, sibilant.

"But then you tempt me with the financial solution to all my problems."

He nodded. "Mr Turco, you did not ask for two million." He let that sink in. "Halbrecht would have. He was an odious little twat."

I shook my head. "And yet you offer me exactly that."

His smile now was sad. "I'd offer three, if it brings me my love."

Jesus Christ. I stared up into the rain, past the ornate shingling at the back of the house. A light showed in one of the windows up there, drifting as if someone were holding it. I closed my eyes and sighed.

"What's her name?"

* * *

II. Impetratio

* * *

Once upon a time, I took an online course to get a license as a Private Investigator. I was almost done with the course when I... well, I'll say I got into a traffic accident and allegedly caused a fatality.

They don't give PI licenses to people who get arrested for manslaughter, acquittal aside.

But I still had the binoculars and some half-remembered videos about how to follow people without being seen, and I hoped I was doing a good job as I trailed the woman down Shore Road a couple days later. She was making it excessively difficult for me, because she was a serious runner.

She darted along the crowded sidewalk now, twisting sinuously past bemused locals, looking like a personal trainer in a tight ocher tanktop and a pair of dark grey running shorts that showed long, clean legs. Her tits had been hard to make out from my car: jogging bras are usually pretty ruthless, but from the way the rest of her body looked, and from her motion, she certainly looked like a ripe one.

It was her face that destroyed me, though, as it was destroying legions of men all up and down the beach. Their jaws dropped in wonder as she fleeted past, captivated by the face and then staring after the jaunty flag of red hair that streamed behind her. Even in her shades, beauty radiated from her face in simple, unblemished waves, capturing everyone who saw her. Including a certain probable vampire who'd last fallen in love during the third century, or so.

And capturing me.

She ran loose and carefree, her skin flushed with exertion, down past the beach parking lot and then up the hill toward downtown, where I already knew she'd left her car. The tanktop left a tempting sliver of skin exposed around her waist, and I felt my mouth water at the health and vitality that rolled off her like sunrays, like sweat, like the stares of the people around her. I saw a girl who loved life: she loved running, and music, and good food, and sex. You can just tell sometimes when a woman will be great in bed, and in my line of work I was pretty good at it.

I wanted her already. And not to pimp her out; no, I wanted her for myself.

She was a canny one, too, making sure she stayed off the internet as much as possible; I'd researched her for five hours and come up drier than expected. Julia Cooney. 25 years old. Taught first grade at CR Milne Elementary. She'd been entered in a ballroom dance competition and taken fourth place, but that was years ago. Avid runner; I'd stumbled across her results from several local 5k races, usually featuring her in the top 25 or so. She hadn't been married from what I could tell, and I could find just one ex-boyfriend: a tax lawyer named Steve Porvek. I'd found a blurred pic of her from the back page of the local paper, standing between him and a local politician at some sort of fundraiser.

Something had seemed a bit off about Steve. He'd had a weird look in his eyes, and you could see his armhair curling out from the cuff of his suit jacket even in that fuzzy picture. But other than that one pic and a sterile headshot of her on the CR Milne website, I'd found almost nothing much.

So? In the absence of intelligence, I'd need to do this the old-fashioned way. I'd need to meet her and smile at her and get her to smile back. I'd need to laugh with her, and talk with her, and maybe buy her a coffee... and then I'd need to deliver her as a sacrifice to the top of Briggs Road in return for enough money to clear my debt forever.

I sighed, feeling the first twinges of heartburn, but I knew this was no time for me to develop a conscience. If I could bring this chick to Felix by Halloween, that'd be it. The last bad thing I'd ever need to do. I could wash my hands of the weirdo vampires up Briggs and go buy that industrial space in South Side, the one next to that famous artist's studio, where I could set up my auto place in peace.

Peace.

But first? Showtime. I accelerated, speeding past the beguiling Ms Cooney and her bobbing wake of admirers. I checked myself in the rearview mirror when I pulled into the space across from Julia's Acura in the municipal lot at the top of the hill, taking in my tan, my Wayfarers, my general air of amiable dishevelment. I gave myself that grin I thought of as "roguish," then twisted around to wait for her.

I'd decided to approach this like any other try at recruiting any other whore. She was in a vastly different social bracket than the women I normally targeted, but I seldom failed in getting chicks to agree to fuck for money. This time, I'd just have to convince her to fuck one guy instead of many guys. And then...

I looked away. I didn't want to think about that, what Felix and his cronies would do to her. After they were done with her. Not my problem, I told myself savagely.

I'd made my plan after I'd seen the sticker in Julia's rear window; she was a lieutenant in the National Guard, or had been at one time, and I'd done my research with care. I timed everything carefully; I needed to be walking toward my car, obliquely to hers, just as she trotted up. Anytime now, her flashing red hair would shine out from the crowd down along the beach, her sublime legs churning, pushing her up the hill toward her car.

Toward me, and her fate.

She was sweating when she came, the tanktop tight and damp over a chest that, I could now see, bobbed with the impressive, hypnotic majesty of a perfect pair of tits in their prime. Her face glowed as she panted, feet light on the asphalt footpath, and I started off, moseying in my joe-cool way, heading to intercept her just as she'd reach her car, the decal in the rear window showing a pair of old-school pistols crossed in an X.

Military Police. That's what the internet had told me.

Julia crashed into the parking lot, huffing, her face streaming with sweat as those fine big tits led the way to her trunk. I was about ten feet back, moving with my usual cocky pace as she fetched up against her trunk and laid her two hands there in steaming, sweaty exhaustion. I took a moment to admire her ass, firm and rounded, peeking out from beneath her little grey running shorts.

"Whoah!" I called, letting my usual saucy charm work its way out from my vocal chords and toward that tempting ass. "Slow down, there. You just about ran me over."

She turned slowly, her shoulders rocking as she panted, aware that I had to be staring at her ass but not giving much of a shit about it. I could feel the confidence oozing off her like the sweat that dripped off her nose. "If I'd have meant to run you over," she replied, her voice low, controlled despite her exertion, "I wouldn't have missed."

I nodded to myself. Not bad. She'd responded already; good start. "Yeah, I'll bet." I squinted at her window as I drew closer. "MP, hmm? Or is that your husband or something?"

"Nah. It's me." She pranced around the corner of her car, flushed but self-assured. "I'm a lieutenant in the Guard. 124^th MP Company, out of the East Adams armory." Her forehead wrinkled as she squinted at me from behind her shades. "You're not in the military."

"I was," I lied. "I'm not as impressive as you, though. I was a tank guy. Baumholder." I swallowed, reading her, watching the lie pass over her and through her and knowing I was okay once she accepted it. "I got out a long time ago, though."

"Cool." She'd opened her car door, having left it unlocked, and pulled out a big bottle of water clinking with ice. "Like, did you ever deploy or anything?"

I shook my head; I'd decided to keep things simple. I didn't need to be spinning lies about bad guys shooting at me. I'd researched tanks, gambling she wouldn't know much about them. Women didn't serve in tanks, apparently. "Just stayed in Germany the whole time." I paused, digging my toe into the pavement, letting her see me hesitate. "Gotta say," I continued at last, looking away, "the MPs there were not like the MPs here. If you know what I'm saying."

"Yeah?" Her lips curled in a slow smirk. "Meaning, they were lazy fuckups?"

I returned her smile. Perfect. "Meaning, they were burly guys from Arkansas." I cocked my head, making like I was remembering. "I'm not sure there were any women in that unit at all, honestly."

"Yeah, they keep all of us here." The smirk twitched higher. "I think they don't trust us if we go overseas." She was calming down, and when she took her glasses off to wipe them down I caught dark, flashy brown eyes.

"Keeping you out of trouble." I nodded seriously.

"No," she chuckled, "I think it's more like they know what we'd do to all the tankers in Baumholder."

"Fuck," I marveled, low and drawn-out like an Army guy I'd seen on YouTube the other day. "I bet you would." I let my head rove down, then up, telling her I was checking her out. I already knew she wouldn't mind. A girl like this? She'd known I'd been ogling her this whole time. "Honestly? If we'd had officers like you, I might have stayed in."

"But you didn't," she shrugged, "because like I said, they keep all of us here." The water beaded on her upper lip after she took a drink. "Well. I stink. I need to get home."

"Oh," I nodded. "I was wondering what I smelled." She laughed a little bit dutifully, I noticed, and I knew it was time to move on. "I'll see you around. I'm Ricky Turco."

"I'm Julia," she replied pleasantly enough. She already had the driver's door open. "Nice meeting you, Ricky. That sounds like a kid's name."

"Well it was, when I was a kid." I was already digging for my keys, crossing toward my car. "My friends call me Tricky Ricky," I added, all casual-like, flashing my smile.

"Ah." She paused as she was getting in. "Well. They don't call me anything but Julia. Or 'bitch.'" She smiled, a warm and genuine one. "I'll catch you later, Tricky Ricky."

"Only if I'm lucky, bitch," I grinned, and she was laughing when the door slammed shut.

Perfect.

* * *

The second meeting was even easier to engineer; I'd found out she lived on Shasta Street just down from the intersection where I dropped Danae off on the mornings after her standing appointment fucking the guys at the police station on the South Side. She didn't like doing cops, but they paid me through the nose in cash and drugs, which I usually punted for a healthy profit through my buddy Shoebox Joe. I'd boot Danae out into the dawn light of the early-morning bus stop, then head for the nearest Ahab's to pick up a coffee before coming back in time to tail Julia Cooney to school.

Not that I needed to. I knew where she worked. I just wanted to watch her coming out of her house, to see those bold legs swishing down her front walk. And I'd followed her for a few days, long enough to get a sense of her timing.

So I waited outside Milne Elementary one Wednesday afternoon when I knew band practice would be going on. I'd found out a kid in there had Rosario as a last name, and I had some cousins who were Rosarios.

Close enough.

I sat perched on the trunk of my Charger outside the main door of the building when she came strolling out with another teacher. She looked like a piece of candy in her short striped dress, and I thought I could feel my mouth actually watering. I'd had trouble finding out when the release time for teachers was, until I'd hit on the simple expedient a couple days before of standing behind a tree down the street and just waiting until a bunch of adult women came boiling out of the building.

She paused when she reached the sidewalk, looking vaguely in my direction, then gave the other teacher a smiling nod and strode my way, paying no attention to the crosswalks. Her shades were huge, stylish, different from the outdoorsy pair she'd sported on the run. "That's a familiar-looking car," she called as she neared me. She wasn't smiling. "I might almost begin to think you're stalking me."

I feigned shock, as well I might; I wasn't supposed to know she taught here. In my mind was a twinge of fright as I tried to work out whether she'd seen my car following her, but then I calmed myself: she'd seen it in the beach parking lot. "Wait. Can it possibly be that pretty lady I saw above the beach? The MP?" I smiled my warmest, toothiest smile. "What would you say if I told you I was stalking you?"