Blood Tally

Chapter 2

The meeting was in the parking lot of a crappy Days Inn in Brecksville, just off the freeway. I’d been to weirder – and certainly worse – meeting spots in my time as a reaper, but it was strange enough to immediately put me on edge. I pulled into the parking lot and cruised slowly, looking for a 2000 Toyota Camry, per the instructions that came with the file I’d been emailed. To worsen my day, a light drizzle had moved in without cooling off the summer heat, leaving everything humid and sticky.

I found the car, and my client, in the far corner of the parking lot.

Boris Novak looked like an old white man in his midseventies. He was thin and wiry, just a little shorter than me – six foot two according to his file – and he had short-cropped gray hair underneath a plaid flatcap. He wore a white and green checkered button-down. His face and hands had the wrinkled, sun-spotted look of any old person. As I drove up, he was struggling to fold a cluster of poster boards and a metal trifold stand into the trunk of his Camry. He stopped his work and leered at my truck as if I’d interrupted something.

I parked and got out. “Boris Novak?” I called.

He resumed his work, practically shoving his poster boards into the trunk and then aggressively slamming it shut. “That’s me,” he grunted. His accent was eastern European. “Are you the mook from Valkyrie Collections?”

I walked closer, looking Boris up and down for a moment before letting myself take a long gander at his profile. Vampires are never like you expect them to be. Their lengthened canines aren’t all that different from a human’s, and while they don’t like sunlight, it only physically harms either the very young or the very old among them. The only signs that Boris wasn’t some middle-class retiree who’d gotten lost on the way back from a golf outing were that the skin around both eyes was slightly blackened and the whites of his eyes were reddish, like he had a particularly bad case of pinkeye.

“Alek Fitz,” I said, offering a hand.

He ignored it, turning away from me and leaning against the bumper of his car. Carefully, holding the flame away from him, he lit up a cigarette and took a long drag.

I let my hand drop. “Are you the mook I’m supposed to work for?” I asked. Whatever patience I had left after the collection earlier today was already gone. You might, on occasion, meet a suave, charming vampire like you see in supernatural romance movies. But most of them were pricks. I already hate this guy, I told Maggie.

Agreed.

“You watch your mouth talking to me, boy,” he said gruffly, gesturing at me with his cigarette. “I told your secretary that I wanted the best you guys have to offer. You the best?” He glanced at me once, did a small double-take, then peered closely at me for the first time. He snorted. “You’re a goddamned troll, aren’t you?”

“Only a little,” I said with a tight smile.

“Fucking rockskins. I didn’t know I was hiring one of you dumb fucks.”

I bit my tongue hard. This was the third time today I’d been called stupid. Rockskin was a new one to me, but the way he said it sounded like it was the worst kind of slur. Probably something from the Old World. “You want me to call the office and have them send someone else?” I asked. I’d been in his company all of thirty seconds and I was already fantasizing about punching him in the face with silver-studded brass knuckles.

“Nah, nah,” Boris said, waving off the question. “You’re here. Might as well get you to work. If you fuck up, I’ll get my money back.”

I was mildly amused at the idea of this asshole trying to get his nonrefundable deposit back from Ada. But I’d definitely been hoping that he’d take me up on the offer on sending someone else. “If that’s what you’d prefer. Sorry, but I wasn’t able to get a full briefing. Mind telling …”

“You don’t even know why you’re here?” Boris cut me off. “Fucking hell. Stupid fucking …” He trailed off, muttering to himself.

What language is that? I asked Maggie.

Serbian, I think. Maggied hesitated, then snorted. Yeah, definitely Serbian. He’s saying something about being fleeced by big business.

I shrugged mentally. I didn’t know anything about Serbia that could help me with this guy. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but if you want this job over and done with, it’ll go quicker if you give me the details.”

He snorted again, ashing his cigarette over my foot. I shifted my stance slightly and took a half step away from him. He said, “One of my thralls has up and run away. I need you to track him down, smack him around a bit, and bring him back.”

I felt my eyebrows climb my forehead. “A runaway thrall?” I asked.

“You didn’t hear me the first time, rockskin?”

There were two kinds of deals that a mortal human could make with a vampire. The first and most common of these were bloodbags. Vampires would do a human a favor – usually cash advances, large loans, or a bit of arm-twisting in a field in which the vampire had some influence – and in return the human would pledge to provide a pint of blood every six weeks for the next couple of decades. These were almost always amicable deals, and our involvement as reapers was tracking down people who’d moved or changed jobs or just forgotten about their debt rather than actively running from it. Blood was free, after all.

The second kind of deal was much more sinister, and closely regulated by OtherOps. Once all the proper paperwork was done and a mortal human had given every kind of permission possible, they could become a slave. Thralls, we call them. Once you become a thrall, there’s no going back. You’ve got a couple decades of literal slavery to look forward to and, if you survive that, you get to become a vampire.

Considering my own situation, thralls had never set well with me. Not the practice, nor the people themselves. What kind of an asshole chooses to become a slave? I felt my stomach turn at the thought. “Could you excuse me for a second?” I said. Without waiting for an answer, I returned to my truck. I slammed the door and almost broke the screen of my phone trying to dial Ada’s number.

You okay? Maggie asked gently.

No, I’m not fucking okay, I snapped back. I heard the line pick up. “What the fuck, Ada? We had a deal. I don’t do thralls. No runaways. That’s Jose and Karen.”

There was a long, tense silence. For half a second I wondered if I’d dialed the wrong number, and then Ada said, “No one else can take this job.”

“Well I can’t either. You and I have a deal.”

I felt my chest suddenly tighten, a brief burn going through the barcode tattooed over my heart. It disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived, as if Ada had thought better of punishing my insubordination. “It’s a complicated job.”

“It doesn’t sound complicated to me. This asshole wants me to track down a thrall and you know I don’t do that.”

Ada let out a long-suffering sigh. “As I said. No one else can do this job. But not for the reasons you think.”

Weirdly, Maggie said in the back of my head, she’s telling the truth.

That didn’t help me. “Are you going to explain what that means?” I asked Ada.

“Not when you’re like this,” she answered. “The job is yours. Figure out how you’re going to do it, and get it done.” She hung up.

I sat gripping my steering wheel for almost a minute before I felt like I could go back and talk to Boris without punching his head off. I could feel Maggie pacing around within her ring, allowing me to feel her presence as if we were in the same room, but not interrupting my dark brooding. It was comforting, like having a friend put a hand on my shoulder, and helped me attain a small level of calm. I took one last deep breath and got out of the car, returning to Boris Novak. He sneered at me, flicking his cigarette butt into a nearby shrub.

“What’s the name of your missing thrall?” I asked.

“Michael,” he answered. “Michael Pavlovich.”

“I’ll need a picture.”

Boris searched his pockets, then produced a wrinkled, wallet-sized photo and handed it over to me. It was of a kid – or at least, what I thought of as a kid. It looked like a typical high school senior headshot of a nerdy-looking chubby teen with braces and glasses.

“How old is this photo?” I asked.

“Five or six years,” Boris shrugged. “Maybe less. Maybe more. Time, it …” He made a dismissive gesture, as if the years didn’t mean anything to him.

So I was looking for someone in their early-to-midtwenties who looked more or less like the kid in the photo. That wasn’t nearly as helpful as I’d hoped. “Do you have any other thralls? I’ll need to talk to them.”

“No. Fuck off. You don’t need to talk to anybody else. Find that fool and bring him back.”

I might have been offended by his unwillingness to make things easier if I wasn’t already at the end of my rope with this guy. I needed to leave before I actually did take a swing at him. “Anything else that would help me track him down? The faster I can do this, the less it costs you.”

Boris muttered under his breath, gave a shrug. “I’ll think about it. If I find anything else, I’ll let you know.” His tone told me that the very idea of making my job easier was an imposition.

“You’re too kind.” I returned to my truck without bidding him goodbye and sat behind the wheel, staring at him while he stared back at me. He flinched first, finally getting in his car and pulling out of the parking lot. I watched until the car was out of sight, then rubbed my eyes. I felt a hollowness in my stomach, a fog blanketing my thoughts that was the first sign of a bad depression. I fought it off. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I needed to get this stupid job over with as quickly as possible.

Whether I was able to contain my anger or not, I still felt betrayed. One of the unspoken kindnesses Ada had always showed as my owner was that I didn’t have to do any of the jobs that required me to bring in an actual person. Even she understood that making me do so was a cruelty. I produced the worn photo of the runaway thrall and studied it for a few minutes. “You know, maybe I should be glad of this,” I said.

Oh? Maggie answered.

“Yeah. Whoever this asshole is, he wants to be a vampire enough that he signed up for slavery. I don’t have the emotional energy for this kind of bullshit. Anyone who willingly becomes a slave needs to be tossed off the top of a tall building.”

I could sense Maggie’s disagreement. Normally, I would have invited her to argue the point. I did respect her opinions on this kind of thing. But not with this. Not right now. I was too damned angry. She said, Well. Probably best to just get it over with, right?

Right. I began to make plans in my head, working through what I’d need to do to track down a runaway. This was out of my normal wheelhouse. I considered calling Jose or Karen to get some advice, but something stopped me. Ada had me working this job for a reason. That reason might be secretive, even from my reaper coworkers. Besides, I tracked people down all the time. Just because the debtor and the debt were one and the same didn’t make any difference. I could do this.

My thoughts turned to Boris Novak. I could still see his leering, stupid face and I still wanted to punch it. He didn’t look like much, but he was still a vampire. Vampires were used to being at the top of the food chain, and there wasn’t a one who wouldn’t break the Rules if they thought they could get away with it. Boris was dangerous, maybe even to me. I made a list of a few items I’d want to keep on hand until the job was over – silver-tipped bullets, fresh garlic. Crosses, despite the press, wouldn’t do shit. But a stout wooden stake wasn’t a bad idea.

You know, just in case I had to defend myself.

I realized suddenly that for the first time I was seriously considering putting one of my clients in an unmarked grave. I scolded myself mentally and shook off the thoughts. This was just a bad day. I could deal with Boris, and I could do it as a professional.

Maybe just a few silver bullets.

My phone rang, jumping in my lap and bringing me out of my thoughts. “What?” I answered.

Ada croaked on the other end of the line, “Have you cooled down yet?”

“Boris just left. I’ll do the job,” I said dully. No need to tell her I was pissed. She knew.

“Good. You have another meeting.”

“Damn it all, Ada. I don’t have time for another …”

“Tonight. Eight o’clock. My house.” She hung up on me again.

My words caught in my throat. Her house. We never had meetings at her house.

Something is going on, Maggie said.

I sifted through my anger until I was able to force my brain to change gears. She was right. Something was going on. This job was bigger than Ada purposefully trying to make my life miserable. What it was, I couldn’t fathom. I took a few long breaths and got out of my truck, heading over to a nearby bush and searching through it until I found Boris’s cigarette butt. I carried it to a nearby trash can and disposed of it. By the time I was back behind the wheel, my head had managed to clear. Nothing to do but go to Ada’s tonight and find out what was really going on.

“Sorry for the mood,” I told Maggie. “It’s been a shitty day.”

No problem. I get it. If I weren’t stuck in here, I would have twisted his head around the wrong way and told him to walk it off.

“Maybe we’ll still get the chance,” I mused, putting my truck in gear and heading out. “To hell with all of this. I’m taking the rest of the day off and getting wings before this damned meeting.”