Seven.
That’s all that it took.
Seven little numbers.
Time to see if the information they bought was worth the long trip into town.
Things move ahead of me. Senses are dulled. Maxi’s long drink, healing wounds, the fighting, no sleep or feeding for days—I’m drained. An easy target. This trip might’ve been a bad idea. Got to know what Roderick’s up to—gotta know what we’re up against.
Cats move through the yard. Black one darting here. Gray one darting there. Peering behind this and that. One peeks out from under the wooden porch, eyes glowing, reflecting the street light.
Walk under a large oak tree on the way up to the house. Cat brushes past my ankles. Look down at it. Gray with black swirls.Suddenly something dives out the tree, smacking my back—angry hissing, nails pushing at my throat, threatening to rip into it.
Forgot to look up. Didn’t check out the tree. Senses are fried.
That kind of mistake gets you dead. Fast.
Shouldn’t have come.
I talk softly to not push the sharp nails at my throat, slicing into my skin, “Katrianna, it’s Simon. Here—talk about Roderick.”
“What do you care for what Roderick’s doing now? Been up to bad things for centuries—what’s the sudden interest? Where were y’all when he was giving me hell?”
“I wasn’t born yet. Trying to save girl’s life,” still speaking as few words as possible, trying to protect my throat.
Her grip loosens. Could break away, but I won’t.
“Love this girl?”
“Just met her.”
“Care enough to fight this war for her?”
“Absolutely.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
She releases me and, without a glance or a word, walks to the house ahead of me.
I follow close behind. A cat jumps into her arms and climbs up to look over her shoulder at me—it’s the gray and black one that distracted me just before Katrianna lunged down on me.
Her black gown skims across the worn dirt ground below her feet, following her usual path from the house to the tree where grass dares not grow.
Climbing the wooden porch steps, her voice sounds like something between a smoker’s rasp and a rusty hinge squeaking, “You go against Roderick—you face him alone. Don’t trust anyone to stand with you. No matter what they say, you will be alone in the end.”
Cats scurry around her as she opens the door. Some run past her feet to follow her into the house, and others rush out into the night.
“Don’t know if I need to face him. Not yet. Hoping you can help me with figuring that out.”
Disappearing into the darkness of the unlit house, “Now what makes you think an old woman knows anything about Roderick? Especially a crazy cat lady.”
“Edgar said you might know some things.”
“Oh, that one said so. Pathetic thing that he is. He’s the one told you where I live?”
“Yeah.”
“Should’ve never taken that ingrate in here. This’s how he repays me.”
“You took care of him?”
“Let that beast hide here and feed on my furry ones while he got over something bad he picked up from his needles. Was too weak to hunt. Couldn’t overpower anyone to feed on them—too delirious to trick someone into feeding on them. Knew he’d die without help. Thought that sickness might kill him. Don’t know how he tracked me down—that boy’d be awfully dangerous if he could keep a needle out his arm. Wandered all the way out here from Frenchmen. Can you believe that? No one’s found me in over a decade. That junkie found me when he couldn’t even say his own name.”
“Didn’t tell me that. Just told me where I could find you.”
“Edgar never does anything without getting something for himself. What’d that info cost you?”
“Seven.”
“Seven what?” she asks stepping deeper and deeper into the darkness of her house.
Furry things pass at my legs. Swear they’re trying to trip me. Can’t see them—just catch a hint of gray and black running in the dark.
I answer, “Seven digits—just numbers.”
“And what young woman did you think so little of to give her number to Edgar?”
“A girl who was so wild that she’d beg me to feed on her. Obsessed that she found a real vampire. Thought she’d become one somehow if I fed on her enough. When I wouldn’t do it anymore, she begged me to give her to another vampire. Until now, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Simon! You still gave her number to Edgar? You turned her over to him?”
Can’t see Katrianna anymore. No outline to her body. Just a little movement in the dark and an occasional flash of cat’s eyes over her shoulder.
“She overdosed two weeks ago. Didn’t tell Edgar that—just told him the last time I saw her was a month ago, which is true—didn’t lie to him. And it’s her real number.”
She chuckles for a moment, then adds, “Sad about the girl. As silly as she sounds, it’s a terrible thing. So many of the young ones now—so many just giving it all away.”
The flicker of a match lighting.
“Now, what can you tell me about Roderick?” I ask.
The match’s flame wavers as it lights a candle. Slowly the candle moves up her body to her face.
Her lips speak in the candlelight, her face still shrouded in darkness, “Roderick’s the one that should overdose. Make the world a better place for everyone.”
She’s over three centuries old. Second oldest vampire known alive next to Roderick—except of course for the unfounded rumors of ancient bloodsuckers living in the French Alps, the Orient, or even Siberia, depending on the preference of who is telling the tale.
She looks no older than a teen playing goth dress-up, with gray streaks in her long, braided, black hair. Her black dress reaches to the floor, is dirty and matted with cat hair of varying shades of gray and black, and was a gown designed five decades ago for an older lady with bland taste.
Her lips are as crimson as if she has just finished feeding. Been an outcast among the vampires as long as I’ve been alive. Living with her cats. At least two dozen of them. They say she feeds on them in cycles, never taking too much to harm them, and never feeding on one again until she’s been through all the rest.
The only evidence of the long centuries she’s suffered through is the grit in her voice.
Her real name is Karianna, although I’ve never heard anyone call her by anything other than Katrianna since I was a child. The legends of her feeding on her vast feline friends are popular gossip among the vampires. They deem her to be dirty, not much more than a human romantically entangled with a pet. After she became Katrianna for so long in perverse tales told in private, people couldn’t resist it in public, even right to her face, as often happens when someone is spoken more about than to.
Without a single blow, they killed Karianna, leaving a reclusive lady called Katrianna who is known only from their tales.
Been years since I saw her face last—she hasn’t had much use for visiting other vampires and hearing their gossip about her. I was a young one last time she came around, and only remember her leaving with deep gashes in her face from an argument with Roderick.
The legends have sworn she’s aged into a toothless bag of wrinkles, and has descended into lunacy from her lonely life in isolation. From what she’s showing me in the candlelight, the rumors of her appearance are nothing more than harsh lies. She looks as young as a high school senior—a girl dressed in an old woman’s clothes.
As to the sanity of a self-described crazy cat lady who drinks the blood of her only companions, I’ll have to brave the dark that shields most of her body to find out.
She speaks, “Roderick has always been fascinated with all kinds of decadence. Women—wine—violence—power, and of course feeding. He’s as happy with head games as he is with drinking the blood of a forbidden young thing.
“After a century of diving into all of it, he began to get bored—the joy of his conquests getting smaller and smaller. Every girl’s blood less sweet than the one before. Every touch a little more dull than the last. Each drink having less effect on his body. I think that’s when he began to crack. He was always a mean one, but at some point he became something much worse.
“He was gone for awhile—before any of us came over to this side of the world—he was wandering somewhere in Southern Europe. I heard the older ones saying he must have finally been caught and killed. Then he returned. Unmarked and unharmed, but with a cruelty that he didn’t have before. My mother used to say the bitter root was twisted a little deeper in him when he returned.
“Truth be told, I used to think he was handsome when I was a young girl. The first crush I ever had. Don’t know if I’ve had another like it. Who knows—old eyes can’t see things as they were. Hearts change the memory a little more every time it comes to mind, eventually being no more than our dream of what was.”
I try to get her back to the story, “What happened when he came back?”
She clears her throat with a huff, “Older ones who said bad things about his new attitude slowly disappeared. My mother was one of the last. The last words I remember her saying were that Roderick is wiping out all the wisdom left in our kind—killing anyone with knowledge and experience to prove him wrong.”
“What was he doing that made them criticize him?”
“When the old fixes no longer satisfied him, he sought out the extreme. The forbidden. Things that are said to leave you cursed for doing.”
“What kind of things?”
“Mixing—mixing the desires, perverting them. Not just orgies, but massacre orgies. Not just alcohol, but alcohol and opium. Not just beatings—not just murders, but dungeons where he’d torture poor souls until they were screaming for death.
“And the psychological—he’s been a student of the mind for centuries. Not happy with just having followers, but needing to pit them against each other whenever he pleases. The power to undo them all—to make them loyal to no one but him. It pleases his sick need for the ultimate power over them, but it also prevents any rebellion. If servants are always fighting each other as much as enemies, they’ll never unite to overthrow their master.”
I ask, “What do you think he’s doing now that’s different? Something’s just started that’s new—something that he’s obsessed with—something that has to do with this blue-haired girl.”
“They say nothing under the sun is new, young Simon.”
So odd to hear someone, who knows what I am and that I’ve lived through decades, call me young. Guess I am young in her eyes.
“Has to be something new—something huge—Roderick was exposing himself to hundreds of people in a bar trying to get it.”
“What?” she asks, her voice changing tone for the first time since we began talking.
“It was at an ‘80s Night. He was—”
“‘80s Night? What’s that?”
“1980s Music. It’s a night where they only play ‘80s music—some people dress up—lots of drinking—lots of dancing.”
“You young ones and your invented reasons to celebrate. But, okay—I get it. What was he exposing?”
“It was all about one girl. A girl named Ambrosia. She was trying to get away from Roderick, and he dug his fingernails into her arm in front of all these people—blood was running down her forearm. Didn’t care if police came—was going to fight me with his two goons, Carvelli and Quint, right in front of all the normals.”
“All over one girl?”
“Yes.”
“Must have wanted her pretty bad.”
“Pretty sure he had already had her.”
“Hmmm…all that trouble over a girl he’s already tasted. She must’ve had something he wanted.”
“Right, but what?”
“Edgar was talking out of his mind for two days when he first came here. Most of it made no sense. Some of it words—some of it sounds—almost none of it went together. But he kept trying to talk about what made him so sick. They were drinking some kind of new blood—some new breed is what he kept calling it. Edgar mixed it with some junk Roderick gave him and shot it in his arm. Something happened, and he thought he’d die.”
“He was alone?”
“No. He was with Roderick and the others. They were all drinking this new breed stuff, when he decided he needed to shoot it in his veins with his smack, but Roderick gave him something poisonous instead of his usual stuff. Said he cried out for them to help him, but Roderick just watched. Stood over him and watched him inch closer to death—studying him like a science experiment. Roderick said he had to see what it’d do to Edgar.”
“How’d he get away?”
“Said Roderick had some girl there—thought he was hallucinating—she had big yellow eyes and giant blue ponytails.”
“That’s her! That’s the girl—Ambrosia!”
“What? Someone really looks like that?”
“That’s her to a tee. Couldn’t be anyone else.”
“Wow, he thought he was seeing things—I did too. Who’d’ve guessed she’d be real, looking like that? Sounds like a cartoon character. Oh, well, guess that makes sense then. Edgar said Roderick was so fixed on her—for hours, that he slipped away without Roderick noticing. By the time Edgar found me, he was speaking gibberish and drooling down his chin.”
“That jerk never mentioned any of this—just told me to talk to you. He knew I was looking for info on why Roderick’s after the girl.”
“‘Course he did. Now he can say he never told you anything. All he told you was where I am—they don’t care about me anymore. No matter how loaded he gets, he’ll never slip up and admit he told you anything, because he didn’t. He got me to tell you. Sneaky junkie.”
“Well, what’d’you think all this has to do with Ambrosia? Why’d Roderick go so crazy—act so careless in public?”
“Whatever she’s got—has to be related to this new breed they’re hooked on. Maybe she makes it for them.”
“Ambrosia doesn’t seem like a dealer, Katrianna—more of a party girl.”
“Maybe she just brings them what they need to make it—maybe just one thing—one ingredient.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe her blood’s the sweetest thing they’ve ever tasted.”
“Doubt it. She’s pretty full of toxins from what I’ve been told. Smoking, alcohol, junk food.”
Katrianna shudders and continues, “Whatever it is—it’s the key to all of this. If what Roderick mixed with that new breed almost killed Edgar, it’s brutal. That boy’s body’s been full of every bad thing known to man. If it did that to him, it’s something powerful. Something never seen before.”
I nod.
“And if Roderick’s so interested in it that he was going to let Edgar die—losing one of his chief henchmen—just to watch what it would do to him, it could be the end of us all.”