“Beg to Differ”, 2/4

[aadler]

 
Second installment.

(Part 1 here)
Part II

They wound up going back to the rooms after all, as Allie’s clothes and hair were so clotted with Camber-Pyclet gore that she had to do a complete makeover. Except for a few splashes on his coat, which didn’t show too badly on the dark fabric, Will was able to put himself back to sorts by sponging his face clean, but Allie flung the fouled minidress off the balcony and into the street, and then spent twenty minutes in the shower. Once satisfied there, she donned jeans and a t-shirt, and plaited her still-damp hair into a thick single braid. Hiking boots and a leather jacket to complete the ensemble, and she was impatient to be on the move again.

Some of her jumpiness sprang from her basic temperament, but not all; the sex-charged feeding had her humming with energy, and she would be more than normally touchy until the first surge wore off. “We shouldn’t be going back out yet,” Will cautioned her. “If that bunch knew who we were, it means the word about us has spread this far already. We don’t want to attract notice; Gutrick might take alarm and change his schedule, and I don’t fancy trying to work out which border he fled across this time.”

Allie scoffed. “That’s what worries you, huh? Not the nagging little thought that they might have heard about us because there’s a Watcher wet-works team sniffing around our back-trail? But no, you’d be way too genteel to mention anything like that.”

“You could be right,” Will said. “They may very well have tracked us more quickly than expected. But there’s no knowing just now, and no avoiding it without abandoning our own hunt. I’m not willing to do that, even if you were, which I strongly doubt.”

“Cut and run when we’re this close?” Allie’s face twisted with disgust. “Not gonna be happening. But that doesn’t mean I want to tuck into a hole and pull it in after us. Sure, I’m down with the whole blood-vengeance deal, but you’ve gotta let me have some fun now and then.”

“I’d say you’ve had more than a bit so far tonight,” Will observed coolly.

Her smile was scornful. “Got a pretty high opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

“I don’t, actually,” Will said. “I meant the killing.”

“Yeah, that part was pretty good.” Allie sighed. “You’d think your former buddies in the Tweed Brigade would untwist their panties a little, considering the chunk we’ve been cutting out of the demon underworld.”

“Ah, but they’re not as broad-minded as we are,” Will replied.

He had said it deadpan, hoping to sidestep the subject with a turn of humor, but he could see from her expression that she knew they were skirting a delicate area, see also when she made the decision not to press the issue. “I just hate being cooped up like this,” she said, looking away. “I’m going stir-crazy in here.”

“I echo the sentiment,” Will told her. “But I keep reminding myself we’ve almost reached an end.”

Rather than answer, she settled into an armchair, her back to him, and began to mutter darkly to herself. Will watched her for half a minute; then, deciding she was safe for the moment, he went into the washroom to get a bandage for his throat.

It wasn’t really necessary for healing; the wounds had closed already, crusting over, and would be new, pink skin by this time tomorrow. He didn’t want anyone spotting the telltale marks, however, so he covered the damage in such a manner that an open collar woudn’t give him away. He inspected the result in the mirror … and then, done with that, he studied his face, searching the reflection for signs of the truth.

He didn’t look like a monster, but he was one, far more so than Allie; he had made his own decisions, whereas she’d been left with no choice at all. His only consolation was the knowledge that, hard as her current state might be, he hadn’t actually made it any worse.

Keep telling yourself that, he thought, and went back out to join her.

Allie had never fed from any human except Will, and the forbidden enchantment he had worked into his blood provided her with nourishment hugely disproportionate to the volume she withdrew. She would dine on animals occasionally — any dog that yapped at her was in peril of never repeating the offense — but essentially her sustenance came solely from him. It bound her to him, gave him the mastery he needed … but she despised herself for what she was, and him for his role in it.

He closed his eyes, seeking the momentary escape from sensation. It didn’t work; the turmoil of his thoughts was every bit as demanding and disturbing as the situation into which he had placed the two of them. Perception could be deceptive; he had acquired Allie barely six months ago, but now it was as if their time together comprised the whole of his existence, as if there had never been any other reality

No, that wasn’t true at all.

His mind shied away from the memory, but it was always there: horror, and helplessness, and despair, and the soul-curdling hatred for the creatures who had torn away from him the only life that mattered —

Enough of this. He had made the decision long ago; there was no unmaking it, and no point in faltering just short of the goal for which he had already paid a willing price. He found a chair of his own and sat back; for however long Allie could force herself to stay still, he would wait and be glad for the quiet.

Shame he couldn’t silence his conscience as well, scabbed-over though it might be.

*               *               *

He had known almost from the first that the Council of Watchers would be of no help to him. To be sure, many of them had taken it as a personal affront that one of their own should be so shatteringly bereaved. All evidence, however, had indicated that this was a random incident, not a deliberate attack on the Watchers themselves, and from the same evidence it was clear that the vampires involved had been a typical band of wandering marauders. No sinister figures of towering myth, just ordinary predators, seeing him and his dearest as no more than targets of opportunity. They had vanished into the ranks of their kind, unremarkable and indistinguishable and not remotely of sufficient importance, in the Council’s eyes, to be worth the effort of finding and dispatching them.

Will had declined to adopt this complacent, impersonal perspective.

His wife had informed him of her pregnancy only two days before. She had declined wine at the restaurant, insisted that they be seated well away from any smokers, minor but emphatic precautions that — viewed in hindsight — were rendered obscene by the knowledge that her life wouldn’t outlast the evening. And the things that fell on them in the dark between street and door hadn’t simply been seeking prey; they understood cruelty, killing her slowly in front of him and laughing at his ineffectual screams, leaving him finally with wrenched shoulders but no other injury, to burn forever in the crucible of knowing his failure.

Perhaps they had wanted to see if he would go insane.

Perhaps he had.

Scorning the Council, he had begun his own search. He had needed information, and not been fastidious as to how it was purchased, whether by means of family wealth that was meaningless to him now, or institutional secrets he no longer felt any obligation to protect. He had made one devil’s bargain after another, indifferent to the price exacted, and in return he had acquired names and descriptions.

There had been seven of them. He had killed one, after months of hunting … and then spent eleven weeks in hospital, for a cornered vampire did not expire quietly. This had convinced him to alter his approach. He had no fear of death — life meant nothing to him now — but it was unthinkable that he might die while any of his wife’s killers still walked the earth. He needed something more than his own skills and efforts; he needed an edge, an advantage.

A weapon.

The ideal weapon would have been a Slayer. This was denied him, but it turned his attention to alternative possibilities. He made more unconscionable bargains, and traveled to one of the places where mystical forces lay in the proper balance, and prepared himself with the proper desecrations, and waited at the foot of a suitable grave. And Allie came ravening up out of the unquiet ground, eyes blazing amber and empty of anything but hunger, and he went unresisting to her embrace. She tore into him and drank greedily … and, as his magicked blood seared through her, became his thrall beyond hope of rebellion.

Only, there had been more to it than that.

*               *               *

“You ever notice we’re reading off different pages most of the time?” Allie asked abruptly.

Though jerked from reverie, Will wasn’t startled; the real wonder was that she’d sat quiet for so long. “Hard to miss that we don’t agree on much,” he said.

Allie waved it away. “I don’t mean differences in personality. For that, you’d need to actually have a personality. But I’m not sure you’re really seeing that this whole business doesn’t mean to me what it does to you.”

For that moment, Will’s voice might have come from a dead throat. “You couldn’t possibly imagine what it means to me.”

“And just how does that not make my point?” She shook her head. “Look at it from my side of the quilt, hotshot. You don’t really care what happens to you once this is all over, but I don’t even know what’ll happen to me.”

Will shrugged. “We part ways, like I promised you from the start. You haven’t been shy about chafing under my service; you’ll be free, and you can do whatever you like.”

Allie made a knock-knock motion in the general direction of his head. “Hel-lo? Anybody home? Look, there’s obsessed and then there’s dense, and you’re turning dense into a whole new art form here.”

Little as he wished to do so, it seemed he must ask. “What do you mean?”

“Jeez, dim-bulb, think about it. We’ve been together my whole blood-gulping unlife. What happens if we go different directions? Does reception fade if we get too far apart? Or even if it holds, what happens to me if something happens to you?”

Will frowned. “I’d say you’re reaching. The link allows me to command you, but there’s nothing to suggest your continued existence is tied to mine. Once I release you, I see no reason you shouldn’t be able to function with full autonomy …”

He stopped; Allie was staring at him with a peculiar flatness, as if trying to convince herself that what she was looking at could actually exist. “No way you could be that dumb,” she said at last. “So I guess I have to believe you really are that self-centered. Congratulations, Willy-boy, you just exceeded my lowest expectations.”

Try as he might, he couldn’t divine her meaning. “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain,” he said.

Her lips twisted with contempt. “Do I have to draw a map for you? Look, what am I?”

There were different answers he could have provided, but here at least he knew where she was aiming. “You’re a vampire,” he said.

“Like all the others?” Allie prompted.

“No, not a bit. They’re purely creatures of evil, damned from the moment of their inception. There’s no spark in them, no soul …”

Understanding hit him even as the last words continued to tumble from his lips.
He had known and intended, when he first took Allie for his own, that part of his essence be tied to hers, for he needed to be able to control this potent tool. Something else had come about, however, something that had worked much to his benefit but caused them both no small measure of consternation. He still didn’t know if it was an intrinsic aspect of the spell he had woven into his blood, or a complication arising from proximity to the California Hellmouth, or even the result of some of the less savory practices to which he had lent himself in the preceding months. Regardless of the cause, however, the effect was irrefutable. More than a bond had been forged between him and Allie; somehow, other gates had opened, and to his surprise he had found that his new companion — the scythe he would use to cut through his beloved’s killers — was, literally, sharing his soul.

That made Allie signally different from other vampires … but, strictly speaking, she had no soul, either, she had just been borrowing the use of his. Her poor fortune that she’d been saddled with such a shoddy one

“So,” she said again, speaking slowly and distinctly, “what happens to me, if something happens to you?”

The only decent reply he could make to that was, “I don’t know.”

Allie nodded. “So when we’re done with Gutrick, when the last one is gone and it’s time for me and you to split company … then, I get to decide if I feel like taking that chance, or if I should find a nice, scenic spot to watch the sun come up.”

Will couldn’t think of what to say to her. “I’m sorry,” was pitifully inadequate, but it was all he could manage.

Allie turned her head slightly, studying him at a slant. “You’re telling me you honestly never thought of that before now? Me, I haven’t been able to think of anything else. If I called you an idiot right now, idiots all over the world would pitch a screaming fit.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Will said. Allie’s expression went very still, but he forged on. “Tonight’s itinerary is still the same; we’ll decide what to do afterward once the time comes.” He tried her with an ironic smile. “If that time comes. Who knows, we might both die this evening.”

“A girl can hope.” Allie’s foot was tapping again. “But that still doesn’t mean we have to sit here in motel hell till time to go hunting.”

His position had been badly weakened, but Will made the attempt anyhow. “If we’re seen again …”

“So we’ll stay off the streets,” Allie said. “Out-of-the-way places, not sitting out in the open wearing a sign that says PLEASE SLAY ME. Because I’ve gotta tell you, that part was really inspired.”

“We’d been in the country less than a day,” Will protested, “and in these rooms for the most of that time. I had no reason to expect —”

“Not caring here,” Allie interrupted. “I just want to find some quaint little bistro where I can mainline a gallon of vodka and check out the dance scene.” She stood and started for the door.

He was already following; he knew when he was defeated, so he might as well play it with style. “Really?” he said. “I had the impression your chosen dance form would always involve a wet t-shirt and a thong.”

“What, that’s supposed to be a bad thing?” Allie’s grin was salacious and mocking. “Look on the bright side: they’ve got a U.S. Army base close by, maybe you’ll get lucky and score with some GI chicks.”

Will snorted. “Not bloody likely! If you thought I had an ounce of capacity left, you’d be doing your utmost to wring it out of me right now.”

They were at the stairwell by this time, falling into the routine that had served them so steadily. “What do you expect?” Allie was saying. “I’ve gotta preserve some pride. Your little dom-sub mojo won’t let me hurt you any other way, but sex is one place I can still make you holler.”

It was a worn substitute for communication, with the real messages hidden in the undertones; but it was what they had, and it would have to suffice.

*               *               *

Will tended to turn maudlin when he drank too much, that being the reason he avoided imbibing to excess. For all her prideful self-image as a hell-raiser, however, Allie manifested elevated blood-alcohol by getting quieter, her concentration narrowing to a pinpoint. (She could also metabolize, in an hour’s time, a load that would render any human comatose, hence his willingness to indulge her just now.) Sitting at a table back from the bar, positioned where her absence of reflection wasn’t immediately noticeable, she let her eyes drift over the dozen-odd patrons of the secluded establishment where they had alit at last, and observed conversationally, “It hasn’t been all bad.”

Will wondered if he had heard her clearly; had that been a not-complaint? “Hmm?” he said.

Allie shrugged it away, looking embarrassed and angry. “Hey, my whole life I never got outside California, okay? I had dreams, I was gonna see Paris with the Guzman twins and hike the Andes and shake my caboose at Carnaval in Rio, but that was always someday. Somewhere deep that I wouldn’t admit it, I was scared I’d never do anything interesting before I died.” She gave him a flash of teeth that couldn’t really be called a smile. “Didn’t know the interesting stuff would start after I died. Hanging out with you hasn’t been any box of Cracker Jacks, but it hasn’t been dull, either.”

This was moving in a direction that could open a plethora of snares, but Will felt compelled to respond. “I can attest that you have … lived, more intensely, in the short time I’ve known you, than many people ever do.” He tossed back the remainder of his own drink. “Including myself, before I chanced into my current situation.”

Allie regarded him with a sideways twist to her mouth that showed a trace of amusement and a larger dollop of something he couldn’t identify. “Trying to bump me off my stride here?” she asked, soft-voiced.

It was easier to inquire than to try and decode that. “Sorry, not following you.”

“You’re a bastard,” she said. “I’m used to you as a bastard. I’m comfortable with it. You start changing that now, acting like something else, it messes with my rhythm. I’m all, ‘What the hell? Is he being nice to me? That bastard!’ ”

“I can see how that might shake your bearings,” he said. “Would it help if I stubbed out a few cigarettes on your hand?”

“It’d fit the pattern, at least.” She looked away. “Did you ever have any plans for after this was over? I mean, anything? Or is this all you’ve got left?”

He considered it; not because he had any doubt, but to be sure no new issues had appeared. None had. “I’m not suicidal,” he told her. “I have no desire to die. But … I don’t have any other desires, either.” He made a vague gesture. “Gutrick is the only one left. Finding him, putting him down at last, that matters to me. Nothing else does. Or rather, anything that did was taken from me long ago.”

“Well, just as a favor to me, could you try to find a little more motivation than that?” Her mood, always mercurial, had flitted back to black anger. “Jeez, cry me a river! All you gotta worry about is the big dirt-nap, but I tried that already, and it didn’t take, and now I’m wondering when I’ll suddenly get the snazzy notion to stroll into a hospital nursery and start snacking down on the newborns.” That fixed his attention on her, and she returned his stare defiantly. “So now you’re thinking it might be a good idea to introduce me to Mister Stake, once you’ve finished your own business? I’ve got news for ya, Bucky: we may, for the first time, actually agree on something.”

“I’ll do it if it has to be done,” he said, working not to give way to his own anger. “But I can’t see why we have to thrash all that out just now. We came out because you wanted diversion. So, divert yourself. I’m footing the bill, might as well at least get my money’s worth.”

Allie glanced around, and her smile hardened. “You’re right,” she said. “Get over here and kiss me.”

Will had seen that glitter in her eyes before, and knew it portended nothing good. “Be serious,” he said to her. “Even if I were willing to make the public spectacle you clearly intend, do you honestly believe you could rouse me to anything more than vague twitchings just now —?”

Her hands slid into his hair and she pulled his face to hers, clamping their mouths together with a force that pinched his lips against his teeth; then she moved to him, straddling him over the chair, and turned her head just enough to murmur into his ear, “Shut. The fuck. Up.”, before returning to the seeming attempt to swallow his entire face.

She might not be capable of assaulting him directly, but Will began to fear he was in genuine danger of suffocating. At last she withdrew, and as he pulled in a few welcome breaths she swiveled on his lap and made a beckoning motion in the direction of the bar. One of the people there separated from the rest and moved toward them: a petite female with short, purple-streaked hair, wearing low-cut spandex pants and a bandeau that covered her breasts but showed a stunning expanse of midriff and navel. She stopped at their table, looking down at them with dancing eyes and a quirk of a smile, and said, “Ja?”

“Hiya, Hot Chick With Tube Top,” Allie said cheerily. “Spreshun sha English-ee?”

She nodded, watching as Allie ran a hand inside Will’s shirt. “You are Americans?”

“Me, yeah,” Allie said. “Charlie here is Irish. He was just telling me about this place he’s staying, offered to take me there for a drink.” She wriggled on his lap, grinned up at the other woman. “And I’m saying, Sure, I got a thirst you wouldn’t believe, and then I see you over by the bar, and all of a sudden I’m thinking how yummy it would be if the two of us went sharesies on him.”

“This is very generous of you.” Will was struggling not to show how flummoxed he was, and the newcomer seemed to find that amusing. “But do you believe he has enough … vigor, to satisfy the both of us?”

“I kinda think he’s got hidden depths.” Allie caressed his cheek, gave it a tweak. “So I’d say the real question is, does he have enough nerve?”

Will drew a cautious breath. “I’m game,” he said. “I just hope I don’t disappoint you ladies.”

There were enclosed stairs leading down to the street. Will went first, the two women following and smiling at one another. As they reached the bottom, Allie said, “D’you have a name, Hot Chick With Tube Top?”

“Yes.” She slid a hand into the back pocket of Allie’s jeans, smugly watching Will’s reaction. “I am Grete.”

“Happy to meetcha, Grete.” Without looking his way, Allie held out a hand to Will. “And, oh — love the mountains.”

Will dropped a stake into Allie’s hand, and Grete was dust before she had time to understand. “I trusted you to know what you were doing,” Will said into the sudden empty space between them, “but how could you be so sure?”

“It’s an undead thing,” Allie told him. “Same way she knew about me, or thought she did. I spotted her just as she was settling on her appetizer for tonight.”

“And elected to draw her away.” He nodded approval. “Neatly done.”

“Team effort. You give good bait. I almost cracked up when you said, ‘I’m game,’ like you didn’t know that was exactly the way she saw you.” The sidelong glance was sardonic. “Or did you maybe think I was really setting you up for a double-header?”

“It would never occur to me that you could be so thoughtful,” he said. “Or that you might possibly credit me with the ability to meet such a challenge.”

“Right on both counts.” Allie laughed. “You’re getting to know me pretty well.”

I used to believe I did, he might have allowed himself to think. Now I wonder. But to do that, he would have had to ask penetrating questions of himself; and those, he was unready to face.

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