CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Moira Writer sat in the stuffed highback chair that had been her father's favourite and listened to the cassette on the player beside her. Reverend Pat Koughlin's rolling cadences carried her along as they rose gradually higher. She sipped at the glass of Scotch in her hand and rode them.
"The question is not if we will join the rest of the world in its movement into post-industrial materialism," he said to her gently. " - into its Godliness." His voice rose slightly to accent his condemnation. "The question is if this generation of Americans is ready to send their country to the ash heap of history. That, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our choice. Either we return to the order our founding fathers found in their faith, or we surrender our country. The actual salvation or destruction of our country."
"That's so true," Moira whispered and swallowed the rest of her drink. Tears blurred her eyes as she thought of the man God had given America as it's greatest prophet. Pat Koughlin now rotted in an Arizona prison because some Jew rabble-rouser was dead in Phoenix. How many enemies of God died at the hand of their Creator when Isaiah or the other prophets called Israel back to its God? Those old Jews were smart - they didn't imprison the prophets God sent them. They followed them instead. It was only when they denied Jesus that God threw them into the pits of hell and ordered all Christian people to keep there through eternity.
It had been Reverend Koughlin who'd saved her ten years ago. He didn't know it. Then or now. He didn't recognise her when she went to work for Christian Nation Television eight years ago, right out of college.
She hadn't expected him to. He was far too important to know each and every intern he accepted into his work. Or each and every soul he'd saved throughout his ministry. It was enough he knew her to be a Christian like he was.
But she knew him. She recognised what he had given her from that stage of the auditorium in the Student Union that night ten years ago when she was saved. He had given her Christ Jesus and He had lived in her heart and ruled her life ever since. That was the greatest gift any man could give another.
But she was going to give the Reverend Pat Koughlin a gift that was nearly as important as the one he'd given her. Just as soon as Luke Renfroe ruled America with God's own iron-fist. She was going to be at the doors of that prison in Arizona to welcome him back into freedom.
Pat Koughlin was going to be free once again to be the voice of America's conscience. He was going to stand behind Luke Renfroe and keep his sight on God - for America. For the American people. For God Himself.
She reached for the decanter on the commode beside her and poured herself another finger of Scotch. Her eyes burned brightly as did her heart now she was permitting herself to think on the man who must save America before it did sink beneath the relentless waves of the sea of history. Only God could save a nation from that fate, and He gave few warnings. Pat Koughlin was His warning to America. She was sure of that. As sure of it as she was that Paula Gulag was going to be able to put back together the coalition God had given the preacher that he might save America.
The River Apartments were three buildings rising fifteen stories above the parkway that ran from McLean to I-95 along the Virginia side of the Potomac River. The main building was a conclave facing the high-rise concrete offices that were an extension of Georgetown.
Tom MacPherson stood on the curb and faced the main building; James Boyd stood beside him. They had ridden the underground from Eastern Market as the sun was setting, but the chill from the river now it was dark made Boyd scrunch deeper inside his lined jacket.
"It's as cold as a witch's tit out here!" he groused.
"It'll get a lot colder this winter," Tom told him. "Okay, we don't know which apartment is hers, right?"
"That's no problem. We just ask the security guard." He grinned. "They open up like a flower in bloom when they see my credentials."
"And remember you well, I'll bet."
"Sure." Boyd shrugged. "Why shouldn't they? They're make-believe cops and I give them a real one to drool on."
"And report you with full description when the Arlington police begin to investigate the death of one Moira Writer."
"Oh." His face reddened and Tom was sure it wasn't just a reaction to the cold. The heat of his blood so close to his skin reminded the vampire just how hungry he was. "I'd forgotten about that."
"You did bring the flack jackets I asked you to, didn't you?"
Boyd nodded. "They're in the car at the house."
Tom's eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the security guard at the desk in the lobby of the building before them. Moira Writer? He placed the name in the guard's forethoughts, slipping it in at their closest. What is her apartment number?
It took the woman's curiosity several minutes to grow enough she looked up the woman's apartment. A smile spread slowly across Tom's face as he read the information in the guard's mind while she read it from her list. Forget this! He commanded her. Moira Writer means nothing to you. You did not look her up. You weren't curious about her.
His smile still covered his face as he turned to the FBI agent. "She's on the fifteenth floor. Now, we've got to get in."
"Why don't you just project us there - like you did when we showed up at the imam's house?"
Tom grimaced. "I know it seems easy, Agent Boyd - but it's not. I've got to have a clear image of where I'm taking us, or we don't go there. You'd been to the imam's; I could pull the front of his house and his porch from your memories. Neither of us have been here."
"You're saying we've got to go through the lobby and ride the elevators up to the fifteenth floor like other people have to?"
"That's it."
"Shit! People will see us. And those damned elevators have cameras in them too."
"Come on," Tom told him and started up the drive toward the front door of the building. "There's nobody in the lobby but the guard."
"She'll see us." Boyd growled as he began to follow the black-haired man who wasn't a man.
"She's going to sleep."
"How about the cameras?" the agent asked as he caught up with his companion.
Tom chuckled and smiled at him as they reached the lobby door. "The River Apartments are about to have some unexplained vandalism, Mr. Boyd."
The guard had her head on her console when they entered and Jim Boyd decided he definitely didn't want to know how the seemingly normal young man walking beside him had made that happen. He wasn't even sure he wanted to be here with him now - only, then, he wouldn't have any of the information he expected to get from this foray.
Moira was pouring her third Scotch when she heard the knock at her door. She stared at it for long moments, surprise freezing her in the high-back chair. "Who the-?" she mumbled and remembered the Scotch. She righted the decanter and replaced it. She scrowled at the spilled whiskey on the sidetable.
In the year and a half she'd lived in the River Apartments, not one of her neighbours had come to her door. And security downstairs alerted her anytime she had a visitor. She hesitated, caught between ignoring the door so she could clean the mess on the table and seeing who was at the door.
Curiosity won out. She rose and stepped across the room to answer the door. She peeked into the peep-hole and saw a middle-aged man with a buzz haircut standing before her apartment. "Who is it?" she demanded loudly so her voice would carry past the door.
Agent James Boyd held his agency identification up to the observation hole. "FBI," he called to her. "I need to speak to you. It's urgent."
Surprise again spread over her. But Moira forced herself to read the letters that spelled out "Federal Bureau of Investigation". And she compared the picture on the identification with the man standing there.
"Sweet Jesus!" she moaned and tasted the first dregs of fear as they found their way up her throat. What could the FBI possibly want with her?
She forced herself to be calm and, remembering to put the chain in its groove, she opened the door and peered out at the agent. "Yes?"
"I'm Special Agent James Boyd, Ms. Writer." He glanced quickly along both directions of the hall and lowered his voice until he was barely a whisper. "We're investigating a matter of national security, could I come in so we might discuss it?"
Her heart pounded. National security? The liberal government would consider her project as a matter of national security. "What does it concern, Agent Boyd?" she asked and glanced at the chain to re-assure herself.
"Ma'am, we suspect several members of Speaker Renfroe's staff of being Communists," he told her, managing to maintain a serious mien. "We suspect they're involved in a conspiracy to bring the downfall of the United States."
Moira's eyes widened. Even as shock at his suspicions swept over her, she felt relief that Paula Gulag's plan to bring the Speaker to power wasn't known. "I-" She glanced at the chain. "Give me just a second, Agent Boyd. I need to release the door."
She hurriedly pushed the door to, removed the chain, and opened the door again to him. "Come in, sir," she told him and smiled, feeling completely safe as she invited him into her apartment.
James Boyd stepped into the apartment, gripping the doorknob as he did so. He glanced down the left hall and nodded. And took another step into the room, pushing the door before him. On the other side of the room, framed by the large window that overlooked the Potomac River and the Polo Grounds beyond, Tom smiled and nodded to him.
"This won't take long," Agent Boyd told the woman and stepped past the door allowing her to shut it.
"What is this about a commie influence in the Speaker's office?" she asked, watching the agent closely.
"Actually, Ms. Writer, I misinformed you. I meant to say a fascist influence."
Her face turned pasty and she stepped back from him.
"What he means to say is that you seem to want to go around killing people, Moira - you personally," Tom said as he started to move across the room.
"Who?" She turned to stare at him, stepping into the bookcase along the wall. "Who are you?" she demanded.
He smiled. "Me? I'm just a friend of Karl von Muribor and of the man your buddies killed yesterday."
"We-" Her face was a kaleidoscope of conflicting emotions for a long moment. "I certainly don't know what you're talking about," she managed to answer. "I think you both had better leave this minute - before I call security."
"Moira Writer. You are such a poor liar." Tom smiled at her as he neared her. "The fact is you've been a very bad girl and it's time you're punished for it."
She pressed against the bookcase and backed along it. "What do you want?" she demanded as Tom permitted her to put distance between them. He watched her follow one shelf at hip-level with her fingers.
"I want to know who's in your gang of crazies - names, addresses, and mental pictures of them."
He touched the edges of her thoughts as she stopped at the junction of the two walls behind the bookcase. And smiled as he found her searching for a gun secreted on the shelf behind her. He waited until she had its barrel between two of her fingers before he moved to her.
He pulled her hand from behind her. "You won't need that, Moira. You've killed enough people already."
"You-" She stared at him in shock. She tried to understand how he'd crossed the room between them so fast as he forced her fingers off the pistol. And she was afraid for the first time since the men had entered her apartment. "You stay away from me!" she demanded as she pulled her arm from his grasp.
He had manoeuvred them into this cat and mouse play, curious at what playing with his victim would feel like as much as wanting to heighten the woman's fear before he tore through her memories. But he had already tired of the game. He simply didn't have the feline's need to play with the helpless mouse in his power. The cruelty of his position embarrassed him, regardless of how much he wanted to pay her back for killing Emil.
"I have some questions-"
"I'm not telling you a thing," she screamed. "Get out of here now!"
Tom touched her thoughts and pushed through the swirling fear and hatred that obscured her mind. She stared at him in surprise and pushed closer to the bookcase behind her. He pushed deeper, careless of her as he touched one thought and then another in his search for her connections back to those who had tried to kill him and Karl, and succeeded with Emil.
"No," she whimpered and sank slowly to the floor.
He dug deeper and she screamed. He found those she had maintained contact with since joining the Christian Centre and searched for connections between them and the people she had cultivated since joining the Speaker's staff. She beat on the floor with her fists. And never took her eyes from his.
He was thorough. He had no doubt about that. Tom MacPherson knew Moira Writer better than she did herself.
"You have been a very bad girl, Moira," he told her as left her. "You've done some very naughty things."
"What are you?" she groaned.
Tom grinned. "I'm a vampire and I'm hungry."
"Please," she mewed
"Please what?" he asked, digesting what he understood of what he'd found in her thoughts and deciding there was nothing at all about this woman to like or even to feel sorry for.
"Let me go," she pleaded.
He reached down and, taking her by her arms, pulled her to her feet. "I couldn't do that, Moira," he told her, consciously playing with her at that moment.
Her eyes were narrow as she watched him closely. Tom felt her hope for escape grow as he made no move to kill her. Her thoughts darted from possibility to possibility. He smiled when she decided she should kick him in the groin and make a run for the door.
He started to grow then. His mouth and nose elongated and grew together to become a snout. His forehead sloped backward. His shirt pulled apart and began to tear as his chest expanded. His belt snapped apart and his pants ripped.
She stared wide-eyed at Tom as he became a bear, saliva dripping from his jaws.
Tom snarled and Moira screamed.
"Jesus God!" Boyd groaned behind them.
The bear bent his head and opened his jaws. Moira began to scream again but the sound became a gurgle as jaws closed across the front half of her neck.
He pushed away gore and swallowed the outpouring of blood as fast as he could. He felt her heart falter and sensed her death.
Pulling back, he gazed at the corpse for a moment. He grabbed one arm and pulled it off the body, tossing it behind him. Immediately, he ripped the other arm from the woman's torso and threw it away.
Cunt! Tom screamed after Moira Writer's soul. And pulled her head from the body.
His anger gone and his hunger sated, Tom returned his shape to that of his own body's. He turned back to the room to find Boyd and was surprised not to find him watching him. Surprised, he extended his thoughts to find the FBI agent. And grinned.
He tiptoed across the room to the sofa and moved to the side to look down on the agent scrunched behind it. He leaned forward and touched the man on the shoulder. And laughed at how Jim Boyd jerked.
"Mr. Special Agent man, we've got work ahead of us," he told the back of the man's head. "Are you going to hide behind this sofa all night?"
Boyd forced himself to look up in the direction of Tom's voice. Relief flooded over him when he saw two hairy human legs standing before him. His eyes stopped at the vampire's groin. "Nice," he mumbled.
Tom followed the man's eyes and his face blotched as he realised what Boyd was looking at. His hands moved to cover himself. "That's not for public viewing," he managed.
"Too bad," the agent grinned at him as he pushed himself to his feet. He glanced about the room and shut his eyes. "Didn't your mother teach you not to be so messy when you were eating? Jesus!"
Tom laughed, his embarrassment already forgotten. "She hated it when I had pizza or any of the other things I really liked. I always made a mess."
"Thank God I wasn't your father."
"Yeah. I think we'd have had some problems if you had been."
Boyd turned to look at him. "Why's that?"
"I've heard how you like to spank bared little asses. When I was eleven and twelve, I had a hard time even letting the damned doctor see me with my pants down." He glanced back to the bookcases and Moira's torso. "I think I'm going to go ahead and send you back to the sitting room-"
"Where the hell are you going?"
Tom grinned. "I'm going to go the bedroom and get into some clothes that aren't torn up. Then, I'm getting rid of those-" he nodded toward the body. "I may not leave fingerprints, but I wouldn't want the damned cops tracing down my clothes. That could prove embarrassing."
"Where'd you get them?"
"Berlin."
Boyd looked to where the body lay and nodded. "Yeah. That might have the Arlington police drawing some strange conclusions." He turned back to face Tom. "What's next?"
"A lot of questions for now. I hope you have some answers."
"Just ask them normal-like," the agent grunted and frowned. "I don't like having you playing around in my head."
"Who's Paula Gulag?" Tom asked as he entered the sitting room. The FBI agent was sitting in the chair across from Tony on the couch. He looked up and blinked at the question.
"Where'd you come up with her?" he demanded.
"She's putting Koughlin's old organisation back together, using Moira. She also ordered Operation Stop Karl-"
"Operation Stop Karl?" Tony chortled. "Where do these white folks come up with this shit?"
"That drunk old bitch hasn't had a sober day for more than twenty years," Boyd mused. "I can't believe she stayed sober long enough to come up with either plan, much less convince anybody to get them going."
"She had Moira doing the legwork, I guess. Who is she?"
"She was Nixon's Ambassador to the UN - before he forced her to resign because she kept getting drunk in public."
"Nixon?" Tom grumbled. "That was a million years ago-"
"She's become a syndicated columnist specialising in right-wing causes - mostly foreign stuff, but a lot of national stuff too. The crazies with more money than brains love her because she oozes class while she hates everybody."
"She loves them because she doesn't have to buy her own booze?" Tony asked and Boyd chuckled.
"Whoever and whatever," Tom broke in, "She's dead meat. Only, I'm getting the idea she'll be harder to get to than Moira was." He grinned. "But I hear she has a trained poodle who might can help."
Boyd gazed the black-haired, good-looking vampire through hooded eyes for several moments. "What kind of shit do you have up your sleeve?" he demanded at last.
"Just that this Sylvester has all the earmarks of being a muscle queen with limp wrists."
"Oh, shit!" Tony groaned. "I know what you're thinking now. You want the three of us looking for this boy with muscles on his muscles-" He glanced up suddenly. "He's white, isn't he?" Tom nodded. "Damn, I knew it." He wagged his head slowly and grinned. "He's going to love what I got as much as old Broussard ever did."
"Jim, I want everything the FBI has on this Sylvester by tomorrow evening - including a picture for Tony here. If you could have him followed around to know what his routine is, that'd be great."
"I'll do it personally, including taking the pictures." He frowned. "After what I watched tonight, I don't want any more noses in this shit than are necessary."
Tom glanced at the clock over the mantle. "Will it be dark in Idaho now?" he asked.
Boyd frowned as he looked at him. "Yeah. They're two hours behind us. Why?"
Tom grinned. "The three of us are going hunting. Go get those flack jackets for us."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Three eddies of air sprang up in the still cold night beside the sign post on the dirt track leading into the pine forest. Tom MacPherson stepped out onto the unpaved road and was followed immediately by Tony and the FBI agent. He looked up at the sign and smiled.
"Posted land. Trespassers will be shot," he read and glanced at his companions. "Think they mean it?"
"You better be glad we're all three wearing flack jackets," Boyd groused. "These Nazis shoot at anything that comes close to their compound - including the sheriff."
"How far away are we?"
Boyd stared down the track leading into the deeper darkness that was the forest. "Half a mile maybe."
Tom nodded. "Okay, you two follow the road to the compound-"
"They've got guards with guns!" Tony complained.
Tom grinned. "Take your time - they won't by the time you two get there."
"Be careful," Boyd called softly as Tom sped down the road and, seemingly immediately, disappeared into the forest before them. "Wouldn't want us to come up on that compound and find them suddenly shooting at our asses," he continued as explanation to the black man beside him. "Well, let's go see what we're going to see."
Tom slipped into wolf form as he entered the woods and didn't miss a stride. He slowed down as he saw the clearing opening up ahead of him and moved off the dirt road into the woods. Sitting on his haunches under low-lying boughs, he sensed the landmines between him and the fence. There was only going to be one way in and that was the road itself.
His lips pulled back over his jaws. There was only the one way in for a mortal. But he could take to the air. He turned his attention to the gate and the watchtower behind it. He snarled as he was unable to make out how many men guarded the gate.
Raising his rump, he stood on his back legs and began to make himself smaller. The connection of his front legs moved across his chest as his body transformed and grew folds of fur-covered skin that attached to his pelvis. His tail disappeared. He squeaked and flapped his wings to gain altitude.
At ten meters, he caught a current that carried him across the top of the wooden gate into the compound. He saw no one on the ground outside but circled the area one more time to make sure and sped toward the elevated guard tower.
He squeaked in delight when he spotted the two men inside. He flew around the small cabin to make sure there were but the two men but saw no one else. Landing on the step beneath the door, he changed back into human form.
Studying the tower room through the window, he decided on the point that put him closest to both men and projected himself into it.
The coffee smelled old. The two men were half-asleep, bored with their guard duty and lulled by the convection heater that warmed their small room. Tom was reaching for their necks before they realised he was among them and could roust themselves.
His hand found the furthest man's neck and closed about it as he lifted him from his chair. His other hand found the back of the second man's neck and pulled him toward him.
"Hi," he offered and grinned at the man staring wild-eyed at his face closing with his own. "I'm hungry," Tom explained as his lips brushed the man's neck.
He opened his mouth and the man jerked at his fangs broke through the skin covering his jugular and pushing into the vein. The man caught by Tom's hand beat on his arm and tried to kick him as he fought to pull air into his lungs. Tom tightened his grip over his trachea and began to lap at the surge of the other man's blood.
He held the second man to him even as the man's strength ebbed and his legs began to give under him. The struggles of the man at the end of his arm grew weaker and his hands moved to Tom's wrist to push feebly against it.
He felt the second man's heart flutter and sucked deeply of the blood still pouring from his wound. The man's heart fluttered again and was still. He released him and stepped back to watch him fall to the floor.
"He's dead," Tom told the man at the end of his arm. He studied the man's red face and bulging eyes for a moment. "My, but you are an ugly son of a bitch, aren't you?" He wagged his head and grinned. "I guess we can go ahead and put you out of your misery, can't we?"
He took the man's jaw and began to shove it back while holding him off the floor. The man stared down his nose at him in horror. He quickly wrenched the man's head to one side and heard his spine snap. "See? That didn't hurt at all, did it?" he told the dead man and dropped his body beside that of his companion.
He went to the window closest the gate and studied the scene below him, fixing it in his mind. And projected himself there.
Tom touched the lock with his mind and positioned the tumblers that it sprang open as he saw Boyd run toward him from the woods. He smiled when he saw the black man start after him. He eased the change from the gate and opened it for his companions. "Come on in," he told them.
Tony was staring at him and Boyd was grinning. "Being as how you don't like me checking out your equipment, maybe you'd better put some clothes on," the agent told him and handed him his clothes that had been left on the road when he changed into a wolf.
Tom's face blotched as he took the clothes and turned away from the two men.
Boyd chuckled behind him. "Tony, you're going to have to become a vampire so I can see if your skin can come up with all those interesting blotches like this boy's can when he blushes."
"He was blushing?" Tony asked and giggled. "Blushing or not, our vampire buddy does have an ever more cute ass."
"All right, you two," Tom growled as he pulled on his pants as quickly as he could. "We're supposed to be here for something a lot more serious than how many shades of red I turn when I'm embarrassed-"
"Or how cute your ass is?"
"Shit!" Tom turned back to them as he pulled on his shirt and began to button it.
"Don't you get cold?" Tony asked as the FBI agent handed him his flack jacket.
"No. Now-" He turned back to study the compound. Directly before him was a small white frame building he assumed was a church from its steeple and the cross that covered the face of the building from its roof to the top of its double doors. He frowned when he realised the top post of the cross was a black swastika on a red background.
To his left was a large unpainted frame single-story building and he sensed a number of men sleeping there. To his right was a small house and he sensed only one man there, also asleep. Extending his mind further, he found three men almost a kilometre away on the other side of the buildings walking guard along the back of the compound.
"We have three armed men along the back fence and they're bitching about being cold." He grinned. "Maybe I'd better take them out first." He glanced to Boyd for approval and the man nodded. "To our left is what I guess is some kind of barracks. I didn't count the number of men there, but I'd guess at over ten. To our right there's only one man in the house there." He glanced back at Boyd. "So, I go take out the three on the back forty - where do we go from there?"
"That'll leave only the guys in these two buildings, right?" Tom nodded. "Okay, so we take out the biggest batch first." He glanced at Tony. "You and me are going to be it on that one. You'll go through the front door and do your scary thing; I'll pick off anybody who manages to get to the back door."
"What about me, Mr. Special Agent man?" Tony growled. "You think us niggers can't handle the dirty work?"
"I want you up there in that guardhouse watching for the boy in the house there," he pointed to the house on the right. "You let that bastard get through and he could get to one of us and none of us walk away from here."
Tony chewed on his assignment for a moment and nodded. "Yeah. I guess you do need this nigger guarding your honky asses for you."
On the trail behind the church, Tom stopped and stripped. He wasn't about to take on three men spread across a kilometre of ground in human form. But he wasn't willing to have his companions ogling him and making suggestions when he came back either. He left his clothes and the flack jacket on the tightly packed branches of the closest bush and, changing into wolf form, loped off down the trail toward the sentries at the rear of the compound.
The first guard was making his way along the chain fence, 300 meters from his closest companion. Tom veered into the bush from the trail he had been followed and eased his way through the undergrowth toward the scent of the man's path.
He knew from the crunch of the sentry's boots on dry twigs the man was moving toward him. He sat on his haunches and waited, his tongue lolling from his jaws.
The guard was bored. He was hoping that little flirt would be at church on Sunday. Her daddy might be a member of the Nation and she might be under-aged, but he was willing the girl knew what-for the way she swung her tail when daddy was looking. She'd been making eyes at him the past two-weeks too. He grinned and rubbed his palm over his crotch. He'd definitely set up a time he could show her all the what-fors she could imagine this Sunday.
He was growing tumescent and imagining her grinding her butt against him as he pushed her panties to her knees when he realised there was something sitting in the path in front of him. He fumbled for his torch as he stopped and peered into the darkness ahead of him. Tom barked a soft greeting. "A fucking dog!" the sentry snorted and started to relax.
Tom pushed his rump off the ground, took two steps toward the man, and sprang.
"What the-?"
The wolf's front paws hit the man in his chest then, toppling him. "Damn dog!" he growled as he tried to turn and use his hands to break his fall. The wolf's body was in his way.
The man's back hit the ground carrying 30 kilograms of additional weight. The blow knocked the breath out of him. He stared down his nose as the wolf raised its head and opened its jaws. He shivered as he felt warm saliva drip onto his neck.
"Shit!" he growled as the wolf's jaws encompassed the front of his neck and tried to bring his elbows under him so he could push himself up. Tom's jaws snapped shut and the man gurgled as his trachea collapsed and his jugular vein was torn open.
Boyd had watched as the black man moved quietly up the stairs of the guardhouse. He turned and glanced from the house to the barracks, looking for signs anybody was onto them yet. He heard Tony grunt and start down the stairs noisily.
"What the fuck?" he hissed at the man as he reached the ground. "You want to wake everybody up?"
"There's two white boys up there who ain't ever waking up!" Tony gasped.
"Two?" The black man nodded, catching his breath.
"Tom had to take them out to get us in," Boyd offered in explanation and wondered just how the vampire had taken them out to get this street kid this freaked.
"One's got his throat torn out, Mr. Special Agent man. The other one's got his tongue sticking out and his eyes bulging like he just saw something nobody ought to see." Tony shuddered. "I don't have anything against vampires, you know? They make some of the best guys I know - only, I ain't about to sit around in a roomful of dead folks one of them just killed. That ain't natural."
Boyd started to make a retort but remembered how fast he'd looked for shelter the night before when Tom became a bear and went after that woman. "Yeah. These boys one on one are a lot scarier than meeting a whole squad of Viet Cong in a rice paddy."
He glanced around and nodded at a support post in the darkest part of the space under the guardhouse. "Scrunch down over there and watch that frigging house like a hawk." He studied the snub-nosed pistol the black man clutched in his hand for a moment. "They have any rifles up there?"
"Shit, man! I didn't take no time to look for one. I had white boys staring at me out of dead eyes."
"I'll be back." He started up the steps to the room careful not to make any more noise.
He shivered as he studied the dead men. The one closest to him had his shirt covered with his own blood, but Boyd could see the two puncture wounds that had caused him to bleed. Bled to death! He tried to comprehend how that would feel and scrunched his neck into his shoulders.
The other body's head lay at an unnatural angle, and he knew the man's neck had been broken. He wondered how a slim guy like Tom MacPherson had taken both of them on at the same time. "I'll have to remember vampires are strong sons-of-a-bitches," he mumbled and pulled his thoughts from the dead men.
He found the men's rifles beside the door and wondered again how Tom had got to both of them before they could even get to their guns. A moment later, he discarded the thought and mumbled: "Guess the moral of this story is never piss of a vampire if you want to live to a ripe old age."
He picked up both rifles, poured two cups of coffee, and carried them back downstairs.
The third sentry was more alert than the first two had been. Tom watched him for several minutes as he studied the path ahead of him as well the underbrush beside him, his rifle held at ready, his finger pressed against its trigger guard.
He would have to take him quickly if he was going to prevent him from giving the alarm. He figured a friendly pooch wagging its tail in the path in front of the man wasn't going to hack it. He decided he'd have to take him from behind and get the rifle away from him even before he could kill him.
The man passed by him and took several more steps before he stopped and cocked his head to listen to the night about him. Tom grinned. He set the spot immediately behind the man in his mind and projected himself there.
His hand was already reaching around the man's arm for his finger on the trigger guard as he materialised behind him. His fingers encircled the man's finger and his other hand went over the man's mouth.
He felt the man jerk as he pulled the man's finger from the trigger. "Hi there," he whispered as he tore the finger from its hand. His hand on the man's mouth pulled his head back. He heard sinews breaking as it continued in an arc toward the centre of the man's back. He pulled harder and heard the snap of bone. Smiling, he allowed the body to fall on the path.
He felt himself becoming smaller as he held his arms out. Skin grew to connect his arms with his flanks as he again became a bat. Pushing off the ground, he flapped hard to gain altitude. Moments later, he was winging back to the bush where he'd left his clothes.
Tom smiled at the fear he smelled in both his confederates as he materialised behind them. It was as permeable as the musk of week-old body odour. "They're dead," he offered quietly and chuckled as they both jerked around to face him, drawing their pistols.
The FBI agent struggled to clamp controls on his fear; Tony collapsed in relief as he recognised the vampire. "You scared ten years off my life," the black man groaned and turned back to watch the house across the clearing.
"You're young," Tom told him, "they'll come back."
"You got everybody back there?" Boyd demanded in a whisper and jerked his head toward the back of the compound. The vampire nodded. "Then, that leaves us with the men in the bunkhouse and the main house - I've put Tony here watching the house while we go for the boys over there."
"That's their leader. I want him alive."
"Why? He could kill either of us. Kill him first."
"And lose the information in his head?"
The FBI agent sighed. "The Aryan Nation's a small group of crazies - a couple of hundred people nation-wide. We destroy this compound and their leader - they disappear back under the rock they hide under."
"Someone's got them organised. This Paula Gulag got them out from under their rock - who'd she use to reach them? Where do they get their money? Who co-ordinates them with the other terrorists?" He smiled at the middle-aged man. "I'd think those are questions you'd want answered."
Jimmy Boyd was silent for several moments chewing on the vampire's questions. "I can take the house," he offered finally and glanced at Tony. "Okay, you go around to the back of the bunkhouse, find a hiding place, point that rifle at the backdoor, and wait."
He frowned as a contrary thought pushed its way into his awareness. "You do know how to use a M-16, don't you?"
Tony shook his head and Boyd pulled closer to him. "This is your safety," he pointed. "It's got to be off for you to shoot anything. Next, you hold down the trigger and you spray bullets everywhere. Either that or you pull your finger off the thing real quick for a single burst of fire. You got that?" The black man nodded.
"Okay-" He turned back to Tom. "I sneak up on the little Nazi when he comes out to investigate - and take him alive. Tony's in back of the bunkhouse, knocking off anybody who tries to get away. Do you know how you're going to take these bozos?"
Tom grinned. "I'm going to walk in the front door and start killing them, right?"
Boyd stared at him. "I hope you're as hard to kill as you think you are."
"Let's do it," Tom answered and pushed himself to his feet.
"Get going," Boyd told the black man. "You've got five minutes before Rambo here starts pulling heads off bodies."
At the door, Tom took a deep breath and held it. He grinned suddenly as he realised he was acting like a mortal, afraid of what lay within the building behind the door. There's nothing to be afraid of, he told himself and slipped inside.
It was a long room with ten double bunks on either side. High windows frosted with the late autumn cold stood between each pair of bunks. Through the thin wall behind him were the latrine and showers. It was reminiscent of what he imagined an army barracks would look like. But, unlike any army in the world, the men in this barracks were not called together to uphold law and maintain reasonable order. These men sleeping before him sought to destroy law and replace order with unreasoning fear.
Changing to mist, Tom rose to the top bunk closest to him. The man there snorted loudly in his sleep as the mist descended over him.
Tom felt the man's eyes spring open as he pressed against his face, pulling his life from him. The man kicked once and was still.
The mist released the husk that had been a man and descended to the lower bunk and the oblivious mortal there.
He moved down the room through twelve more beds and their inhabitants. He was gorged and the mist could barely lift from the floor to the lowest bunk. He followed the bed frame up to the first blanket and began to spread along it toward the sleeper's face.
He oozed along the man's body toward his face slowly and had reached his neck when the man jerked and began to awaken. "What the-?" he growled, his mind pulling itself from the tendrils of sleep. The outer edge of the mist moved down the slope of his chin. "Jesus Christ!" he yelled before the mist had covered his mouth and claimed his nostrils and he was silent.
The man sat up and pushed hard at the mist as it began to settle over him, melding against his flesh. His effort to free himself became frantic as Tom wrapped himself around his head and began to suck his life from him.
"Goddamn!" the man in the top bunk bellowed as he stared down into the mist and saw him bunkmate beneath it. "There's something in here killing us," he called out as the mist sluggishly released the husk from its grip.
A broom crashed into the mist and a man grabbed at it to pull it away from the body. Tom followed his hands up his arms.
"Get it off me!" he screamed as the mist spread across his chest and expanded toward his face. Broom handles and rifle barrels sought to pry Tom from the man as he found his mouth.
The man struggled. He pushed at spongy mist and fought to free his face from it. But when he attempted to pull air into his nose to feed his tortured lungs, tendrils of the mist moved into his nostrils and found his brain. And fed.
Even as mist, Tom MacPherson knew sixteen men in the barracks were dead, that only four remained. He released the man's body and pulled into himself, becoming more solid as he rose on human legs once again.
The men before him in the centre of the aisle between the beds were young and they were frightened. They packed together, watching him closely and retreating toward the rear of the room and the back door. Tom grinned at them.
"Kill him!" one demanded. "Kill the fucking monster. He can't take all of us at the same time."
Tom concentrated on the boy lowering his rifle to his briefs-clad hip and pointing it at him. He projected an image of mist rising up along his legs at the boy and grinned more broadly as the kid's eyes grew large before he dared look at the floor.
The boy screamed and dropped his rifle as his synæsthesia had the mist already up on his thighs. "Get it off me!" He stamped his feet and kicked at the image he felt melding with him. His three companions moved away from him fearfully, watching him. "Get it off me - please!" His voice broke and he whimpered: "It's going to kill me too. Sweet Jesus!"
Tom found he could keep the kid seeing the mist and feeling it move up his body with only a small section of his mind. He turned to face the three remaining men as the boy stamping became stronger. "It's eating my dick," he mewed. "I'm going to die."
A second rifle was training on him and Tom gripped the hand on the barrel with his mind. The rifle jerked from his direction and began to move toward the boy who thought he was being eaten by the mist. Kill him, Tom commanded the gunman. Kill him now.
The gunman stared down at his rifle and his hands holding it. The muscles in his finger on the trigger guard twitched. His index finger touched the trigger. Explosions crashed into the barracks as the boy sprayed the other boy with automatic fire.
His companions broke and ran as the man's rifle continued to spray bullets into the body in centre of the barracks jerking with each new impact. Tom saw the back of the head had been blown off. He heard the blast of explosion as Tony emptied his rifle's magazine into the two men who had fled into the cold night in their underwear.
"There's just you," he told the boy staring at what remained of his friend on the floor.
The man's head jerked toward him, his eyes wide. "What are you?"
"It doesn't matter."
The boy's body trembled its entire length. "You're naked."
"That doesn't matter either."
"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"
Tom felt the mortal's fear, the tightness of his every muscle, and realised he was frozen in place by his fear. "I thought you believed in dying for your cause," he said, taunting him as he stopped at his elbow. The boy was a little shorter than Tom.
"Don't kill me," he moaned and looked away from Tom. "Please, sir, do anything to me but just don't kill me."
"Anything?"
The boy's head jerked one time in a nod. Tom realised he was enjoying this and wondered if Emil had ever played with the drug dealers he hunted before he killed them. He reached out and gripped the boy's nearest arsecheek through his briefs. The boy's body tightened further. "You like that?" he whispered and reach his tongue out to caress the boy's jugular.
The boy sniffed. "You can make me queer if you let me live," he mumbled and Tom felt the revulsion flood every corridor of the boy's mind. He pressed his fangs against his neck as his hand slipped under the elastic of the boy's briefs. His palm spread to grasp both arsecheeks.
"Show me you like my hand there," Tom told him and nibbled at his earlobe. The boy twisted his head away, straining the muscles in his neck. "Grind your butt against my hand and show me just how much you want me fucking you."
"You'll let me live?"
"Maybe."
The cheeks flexed tentatively under Tom's hand. "Push these shorts down to your knees. Get naked, boy." Tom's finger slipped into the boy's crack and he grinned as the terrorist gained courage and ground his butt against his possession of it.
"Come back up here and kiss me."
"Please," the boy pleaded as he stood and stared at Tom beside. "You're going to let me go, aren't you?"
"Kiss me like your life depends on it."
The boy turned in on him, continuing to writhe against Tom's hand as his face moved slowly toward Tom's. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he gazed hopefully into the vampire's face. He shut his eyes and pressed against Tom, his mouth searching for his.
He was playing with the boy. Playing with his hope. And he was enjoying it. The boy's lips opened as they found his and the kiss was as fervent as any Emil had ever given him. The boy's tumescence grew into erection between them as he ground himself against Tom with growing abandon. His tears were gone. The boy wanted his life and was willing to give himself for it; Emil never had the chance to barter for his.
His hand left the boy's ass and, joining his other one, moved up over his smooth chest and onto his neck. One shaped the boy's chin while the other one went to the crown of his neck. He pulled his face from the boy's and smiled at him.
And twisted his head hard. Sinews popped before the boy's face could show his startlement. His spine snapped as his eyes began to grow large.
Tom was still smiling as he let the boy's body collapse to the floor.
A gasp from the bunk behind him made him turn quickly, ready to attack, his fangs bared. "You going to kill me too?" Tony asked quietly from the bunk.
Tom blinked and sought to reel in the rampaging murder in his heart. He stood in the aisle and gazed at the black man without seeing him. "You sure did love that boy," Tony continued, his voice a soft caress soothing him.
"Emi-" He lowered his gaze. "He didn't even have a chance, Tony. I found him under the rafters, his head and chest crushed. This garbage-"
The black man rose and approached him. "They deserved what they got, Tom. Don't you ever forget it. What they started, it came back around." He grinned. "Doubled, looks like."
He whistled then. "You took out 18 of them, boy. You only gave me those two who ran out in just their underwear."
"You killed them?"
The black man nodded. "They were dead on their feet but still dancing their jig `til the last bullet. I can just imagine what the brothers in Anacostia could do with guns like that M-16."
He glanced at the dead man at Tom's feet. "I thought you were going to get yourself a little piece before you put him away-" He grinned. "You sure had him going for awhile there."
"Maybe I should have let him live. He was begging-"
"An eye for an eye, bro'. I guarantee you, if the tables were turned, he wouldn't have thought nothing of pulling the trigger - before, during, or after." He studied Tom for a moment. "You better remember that, Mr. White Vampire. Bullies like these boys - they either scare the shit out of you while they fuck you in the ass or they're down on their knees sucking dick. They don't know any in-betweens."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I awakened slowly, relishing the comfort of my bed beneath me and the lack of threat to me, mine, or the guests under my roof. Relaxed now I no longer felt the hand of death still pressing on my life.
I allowed myself thought, remembering the past week now I was safely past it. Emil recovering slowly - but returning to life. The boys who were my guests alive, though now as immortals. The women were well, as was Valentin. The assassins and the fear they sought to induce existed only as part of the past now behind us.
The debts the employers of that garbage had incurred were still to be collected, of course. I could, however, take my time in my collection. I could be gentle - even magnanimous if I chose - in that collection. But collection would come. Every action had its reaction. Every debt had its payment. Karma was an integral aspect of life on all the planes of existence, a natural law that could not be abridged.
I rose and pushed myself from the edge of the bed slowly. Beyond the house, on the plains that swept eastward to the Ural mountains and westward to the marshes the Dutch had made liveable, the sky was changing from blue to golds and mauves as night came again to smooth out the stark edges that sun-light gave to the world. I dressed and joined the menagerie I expected in my kitchen.
Valentin cleaned and diced vegetables at the sink. When he did not turn and acknowledge me, I immediately became curious and touched his thoughts. And felt his embarrassment permeating every nook of his forethoughts. I stepped to where he stood and said softly: "What's wrong?"
He jerked his head back to the women sitting at the table. "They know, my Prince."
"They know-?"
"About Herr Emil." He lowered his head and continued: "They tricked me and found him in the larder before I could stop them."
I smiled. "We need have no secrets from our guests, Valentin," I reassured him and glanced questioningly at the mounds of diced vegetables on the counter. "Are you again cooking for the Russian army?"
He followed my gaze and blushed. "I was distracted, Sir."
"Emil is in the larder?" I asked and he nodded.
He quickly rinsed his hands and, wiping them on his trousers, led me around the table. I noticed Lynda Renfroe who had become a vixen since her son and I met death and barely escaped the encounter had a sense of inquisitiveness about her I'd not felt much of this week. But she and her lover would wait; they and theirs were well and my Emil was not.
Valentin opened the door and turned on the overhead as I moved directly to the back of the small room and the Swiss lying there. I knelt and reached for his wrist. And smiled as I felt his pulse stronger than it had been when I brought him home this morning. I extended my thoughts to touch his mind, expecting the empty corridors I'd found there earlier.
My eyes widened and I felt my cheeks spread into a grin as I found thought inhabiting those corridors once again. "Soon, Liebchen," I mumbled softly and released his arm. I brought my own wrist to my mouth, opened a vein, and pressed the wound to his lips.
Standing and healing the wound in my wrist, I turned back to Valentin, feeling comfortable with the world in which I existed. "Tell me what has happened while I slept."
"The women found me coming out of the larder, Sir-"
"Please." I held up a hand to stop him. "What have they done with their knowledge?"
"I do not speak English, my Prince." He shrugged. "They sat about the table and drank coffee - and talked."
"But they've done nothing based upon their knowledge of Emil's condition?"
"None, mein Herr. They only talked and drank coffee . . . Until the boys-"
I gazed at him and waited. He coloured slightly. "They are vampires, yes?" I nodded. "They somehow made it down the hall to the WC without being seen-" He grinned. "We suddenly heard the water running and voices . . . They spoke in English, Sir."
"Go on," I told him, intrigued in spite of myself.
"The American boy moaned very loudly, Sir. He kept saying the same thing over and over - again loudly. It was a command to young Johan. Fraulein Renfroe turned very red and became angry. It took Fraulein Nightwing slapping her in the face to calm her."
I nodded. And smiled. I could imagine the scene well enough without Valentin's elaboration of it. The American boy might well be completely cumbrous - irresponsible, self-centred, and most other attributes modern European youth did not exhibit in large numbers - but he was rapidly becoming a thoroughly loveable curmudgeon for me.
The lad knew well his mother's blindspots and seemed quite willing to light phosphorus flares within them to enable her to see into them - whether she wished to do so or not. Normally, of course, I would be negative toward disrespect shown to one's parent - but, when one was pulling that parent away from her own bigotry? Yes, I was growing to like young Jody Renfroe.
"Where are the boys now?" I asked Valentin.
"I don't know, Sir. That was an hour or more ago and I felt my duty was to ensure Herr Emil was left undisturbed."
"And you were correct to do so," I told him quietly and stepped to the larder door.
If Jody Renfroe was sure enough of his awakened sexuality to rub his mother's nose in it, knowing her prejudice in the face of her own homosexuality, far be it from me to intrude in the lad's education of his mother. I would do my best to remember to hide my face behind my hands when I smiled at his antics. And tread carefully when in the presence of the reporter who had become inexplicably a mother hen.
The telephone began ringing as I stepped into the room. I watched in humoured surprise as Lynda Renfroe quickly pushed herself from the table and ran into the front of the house to answer it and wondered what she would say when someone on the other end of the line began speaking Berlin-accented German to her.
I followed her to the parlour and smiled when she turned, pressing the receiver against her chest, and opened her mouth to yell for me. "Is it for me?" I asked quietly. She nodded embarrassedly and handed me the phone.
I answered and immediately recognised James Boyd's voice on the line. I blinked. His was one voice I would have liked not to hear. My life had only now begun to return to normal after his last call.
He spoke quickly, presenting me no opportunity to interrupt. I knew where Tom was as I hung the phone up. I also knew where I would be in several more hours. And would remain - until my American lover returned to his senses. I collapsed into the chair beside the telephone stand, my eyes closed and my hands moving to the crown of my head as I leaned forward. "Gott im Himmel!" I mumbled in shock.
Tom MacPherson had become insane with grief. Tomi who was a composite personality of naive American boy, spiritual German priest, and knowledgeable Ukrainian Prince. Tomi who would not drink human blood. Tomi who, only a year ago, had restrained me from rampaging through the American fascist organisation. He was now killing men and women. He was feeding on humans. He was carrying out massacres throughout the American heartland, massacres no one would be able to explain reasonably - and involving mortals in doing so.
I knew now he loved Emil as much as I did.
I returned to the kitchen slowly, my mind in turmoil. Of course, I would go to him. He needed know Emil lived. I needed assure myself he did not become hurt in his rage.
But would I be able to calm him? To re-claim him to the limitations of sanity? Would he allow me that?
It was 1800 hours on the German plain south of Berlin as I entered the kitchen. That meant noon in Washington. I did not relish the discomfort the mid-day sun would give me. And Tomi would be asleep in the American day. I had several hours, at least, in which to formulate plans.
Lynda Renfroe watched me enter the room. "That was Jimmy Boyd, wasn't it?" she asked. I nodded. "What did he want?"
I sighed and moved to the table and the first vacant chair there. "There were a number of strange deaths in your country last night."
Valentin turned from the sink and gazed me. "Tomi is going around killing the people who started this," I told him in German.
"You go to America then?" he asked and I nodded. He returned to his vegetables at the sink, satisfied. The women sitting at the table with me watched me closely, waiting.
"My lover - the other one - is in America. I fear he has perhaps become addled with his grief," I told them.
"These deaths-?" Lynda asked, the part of her that was a reporter returning with a vengeance I could see in her eyes.
"A compound of more than 30 men in someplace called Idaho - they called themselves the Aryan Nation."
"Tom killed all of them?" Barbara Nightwing demanded.
"After he killed some woman in a Congressman's office - a woman who orchestrated the employment of the assassins who came after us."
I glanced at Valentin's back. "I shall need you both to help my man with Emil."
"He doesn't speak English," Lynda groaned.
"He's a German in Germany," I observed quietly. "German is the language spoken here."
"We'll do whatever he says," Barbara Nightwing answered for both of them. "Your boy in there is safe with us." She smiled at me. "Only, we're going to move him to a bed."
Across the room from us, near the entrance to the hall, air shimmered at the edge of the light from the overhead and, for the briefest moment, the room felt too full. Jody, holding Johan's hand, stepped into the room and grinned at the women. "What's happening?" he demanded as they moved toward us.
Lynda stared at the two boys, a frown beginning to pull at her lips, and closed her eyes for the briefest moment. She said nothing.
"Jesus!" Jody cried, "you guys all look like you've just heard world war three's just started. Who died?"
"Sit down and shut up!" Lynda snapped. "We're trying to have an intelligent discussion."
I quickly brought my hands to my face to hide the smile I couldn't control.
"Sorry, Mom," Jody told her and slipped into the chair beside Barbara Nightwing, across the table from his mother. I did not sense regret in his voice. "So, why's everybody so glum?" Johan eased himself in the chair beside the American and glanced toward me for direction.
"Have you fed yet?" I asked quietly, unwilling to intrude upon this tableau in front of a mother still struggling to accept her son and doing so badly. Outside and alone with the two boys I could satisfy their curiosity without incurring Lynda's animosity.
"Jody'll eat when the rest of us do, damn it!" the red-haired woman hissed. "Your servant's over there slaving away to make dinner for us-"
Barbara had taken her hand and was squeezing it to silence her. My face was again hidden behind my hands as I grinned as broadly as any impish cherub. Jody simply stared at his mother in disbelief. If one insisted upon having an argument, one needed take care of the grounds where that confrontation would be held. Anger had prevented Lynda Renfroe from doing that and she was already well into embarrassing herself.
"You want me puking all over you and everything else around here?" Jody demanded, shattering the spell of unreality grown up about us with the truth.
"Have the cows been put in the barn for the night?" I asked Valentin and pushed myself from the table.
"The Turk does so now, mein Herr," he answered.
"Excuse me, but I'm hungry," I told the women and dematerialised from the kitchen before either of them could say anything. I expected the boys to follow me.
They were barely more than children. They were naive to a fault. They had little concept of their powers. And one of them at least was more than slightly irresponsible in his hedonism. But I had decided I would have any vampire with me when I entered the maelstrom Agent Boyd implied dear Tomi had stirred up last night in America.
I had barely entered the last stall of the barn when I felt the air about me stir and knew before seeing them the boys had joined me.
"Did you excuse yourselves?" I asked as they appeared beside me.
Johan nodded but I noticed Jody's face begin to blotch. I permitted myself a moment to wonder just how much I was going to have to teach this lad.
The barn was cold and I realised the door was open. I also heard the lowing of my cattle as they neared us. I put a foot on a bale of hay and leaned forward to face my two possible confederates. "Tom has killed a number of fascists in your state of Idaho," I told the American. "Apparently, he had the friendly FBI agent who sent your mother to me with him as he did so."
"He killed guys in front of a cop?" I nodded. "Jesus! That takes some real balls."
"Agent Boyd has suggested I come to America and find a way to dampen Tom's murderous impulses."
"Why?" Johan asked. "He kills those who sent the assassins, yes?"
Beyond us, the first cow entered the barn. Outside, I heard the Turkish gastarbeiter slap another cow's rump to speed it along.
"Emil is alive; but Tom doesn't know that. I don't know how much he has stirred up or what needs still be done. But I would like to have with me men who will not fall at the first bullet aimed at them."
Jody studied me carefully. "You want us to come with you?" I nodded. "To help you?" Again I nodded.
He snorted and a smile formed his lips. "And here I was thinking you didn't like me-"
"There are times you are immature and irresponsible," I conceded. "You will need follow my orders exactly."
"You shall allow me to help you, Prince Karl?" Johan asked, catching up to the conversation.
"If you will."
"It will be my pleasure, my Prince."
I ignored the Turk who had closed the barn door and was now opening up bales of hay for the cattle. He spoke no English. "We shall be hunting fascists in the American countryside - their habitat," I told them, remember Boyd had told me Tom's plans were to attack several militia groups around the country. "These men aren't especially intelligent but they will be protecting themselves with an ample supply of weapons. They may well prove to be dangerous to us as well as this mortal with us."
"And why are you inviting us along?" Jody demanded suspiciously as the Turk waved to me and let himself out of the barn.
I shrugged. "I would have your strengths if they are needed. I would also have whatever influence either or both of you may can exert on Tomi." I shuddered as I remembered Boyd's description of my American lover becoming a giant bear when he had killed the woman. I would have a brake on his murderous impulses. I would have my sensible, gentle Tomi back when we were through. Emil nor I needed a monster sharing our lives.
"You will help destroy the underbelly of American fascism - the unthinking garbage that lends itself to terror, that would bully others into surrender. You'll have human blood-" I glanced at the nearest cow and smiled. "And, for several days, Jody can be free of his mother attempting to control him-"
"Count me in," the American told us immediately and grinned.
"I don't want any rough-housing," I told him. "No striking out on your own. I'll need to know where you are and what you're doing-"
Jody's face became a grin as he glanced at Johan. "You aren't going to stop us from having fun when we're alone and safe are you?"
I chuckled. "If you mean what I think you do, I would not deny the two of you your pleasures."
"Mom sure as shit would!" he hissed, permitting his anger to appear in force before again shackling it.
"But that's only at the house," I warned him. "When we hunt or when there are mortals about, you need keep your clothes on."
"Karl-" Jody glanced back at Johan and returned his gaze to me. "My Prince, I don't understand Mom-" he continued. "Why doesn't she just accept what Hans and I have?"
"You're her only child?" He nodded. "She finds it difficult to permit you to fly. Human parents don't push their nestlings out as birds do - they seem to want to hold on."
"But she's gay herself!"
"And she knows what that can mean in the mortal world where men and women must work for a living - and encounter the world's prejudices everywhere they turn. She would protect you from that-"
"But I'm not mortal - neither Hans nor I are."
"True. But you also have no means of support. You live in her home. You are probably often as irresponsible as you were ten years ago. She does not see you grown-up yet. Give her time, Jody - and give her reason to see you as an adult."
"Shit! It always comes down to being grown-up, doesn't it? Aren't guys over 18 allowed to have fun if they're going to be adults?"
I grinned. "We can be immature - even irresponsible - but not all the time. Have your fun, lad - but do so with someone who likes the same kind of fun. Do so when it doesn't affect your work or studying."
"Yeah," the boy groaned. "Grow up, Jody Renfroe."
"You want to be a child all the time?" Johan asked quietly and watched him closely.
"Shit, no! But sometimes-" He glanced from the Czech to me and back. "I don't like it, but I think I see what you're telling me." He grinned sheepishly at me. "I'll even try to remember to call you Sir' or My Prince' from now on, like Hans does."
He held out his hand and Johan took it, slipping in beside him.
I smiled. "I think you'll make it," I told him.