Hammered

Chapter 20

Well, that was revelatory. When I met Leif shortly after moving to Tempe, I never suspected then, or at any point afterward, that he’d been waiting for me there. For centuries. Or that, for him, all our professional and personal acquaintance was nothing more than a prelude to pursuing his own vendetta.

I felt hurt for the space of a mouse whisker—“He used me!” a tiny voice said—but then I laughed at myself. He was a vampire, after all. To them, all other creatures are to be used as they see fit. Leif had fooled me into thinking that he was different.

But I was not the only fool. The expression on Gunnar’s face told me he was thinking similar thoughts. The question was, did this new information change anything?

Leif had given his word and followed through on it. I had given mine, and that is no small matter for one of my generation. People today make promises, break them blithely, and then excuse themselves by saying “I tried” when in truth they did not. For people of the Iron Age—my age—a man’s word was the foundation of his reputation, the underlying architecture of his honor, the bedrock of his identity. Even though I often lie—a very different thing—I never forswear myself. I couldn’t get around that. Or the fact that Thor could use a good killing.

But, thanks to Jesus, I had my doubts that slaying Thor would be an unequivocally good idea, even though all evidence suggested he might be an unmitigated asshole. The function of assholes in the world, just like the asshole we all have, is to spread shit around. They are loathsome and dirty and smell extraordinarily bad, but they are also vitally necessary.

That thought led me to consider the nature of vampires. Were they vitally necessary? What niche did they fill in the scheme of things?

Despite the impenetrable curtain Leif had drawn over his undead secrets, I knew something about vampires he’d probably rather I didn’t know. He couldn’t hide it from me, because I could see it.

Normal people churn with life and their bindings to the earth; the activity of their minds and their relative health is clear from their auras, which suffuse their entire being. Vampires are different in that there are only two clear areas of “being” at all. There is activity in the center of their rib cages, and there is activity directly behind the eyes, a dull red pulsing glow like coals in a fire. The rest of them comes across as nothing more than a sterile yet ambulatory collection of carbon, calcium, and iron, though they do have thin gray auras around their heads and torsos.

Those red lights, whatever they are—the dark magic of vampirism Leif refused to explain—they are fail-safes of a sort. I think of them as resurrection engines. That’s why you can’t just stake a vampire in the heart and assume you’re done; you have to cut off the head as well to prevent regeneration, because if someone removes that stake, it’ll heal up and the vampire will rise again. Even then, if you cut off the head and remove the stake, the heart will grow a new head eventually. You’ll have a thin and wasted-looking vampire, but it will be tremendously hungry and feed incessantly until it gets back to full strength.

Theories in Druid lore speculate that vampires are completely alien, or else demonic symbionts brought to this plane long ago. It mattered little to me which was true, because the upshot of it was that I could do whatever I wanted to vampires. As far as the earth is concerned, vampires don’t exist as sentient creatures. They are simply collections of minerals and elements that have yet to be reabsorbed, and as such I could unbind them whenever I wished. Druids have absolutely no tabus against using our magic on the dead—it’s only the living we can’t mess with.

My private theory about the downfall of the Druids—which I didn’t share with Granuaile when she asked, except in passing—has quite a bit to do with vampires. In my opinion, Caesar was simply a sword wielded by the hands of vampires in Rome. There was (and still is) a well-known nest there, and I think they were working behind the scenes, pushing the Senate to have Druidry wiped out. The young vampires wanted to expand northward and carve out territories of their own, but the continental Druids in Gaul were preventing that expansion by unbinding the vampires on sight, turning them into a mush of protoplasm and then setting the mess on fire to prevent any chance of resurrection.

I would have done the same to Leif when I first met him, if Hal had not introduced us and taken care to warn me ahead of time that he was very nice for a dead guy. Though I was aloof at first, gradually I realized that Hal was right and I came to enjoy Leif’s company—even considering him a friend. I was not sure anymore if Leif’s regard for me had ever been genuine.

His tale also made me wonder if he knew what I could do to him if I so chose. He became a vampire after the fall of the Druids, and most likely his maker, Zdenik, had as well—though I was basing that guess entirely on his ethnic name and the conjecture that vampires had not yet penetrated into Bohemia by the sixth century. But Zdenik had probably been made by one of the Romans, and they could have told him what Druids could do, and he in turn could have told Leif. I suspected that asking Leif about it would be wasted breath, so I cleared it from my mind. Something else leaped in to occupy it, a horrible gestalt that had been bubbling up to the surface all the while.

Leif knew I’d have doubts after he said those things, and he also knew with full certainty that I’d take him to Asgard anyway. Why?

The chilling conclusion I reached was that I had given Leif my word, and any creature capable of waiting for centuries to get his revenge would not hesitate to use any leverage he could to ensure I followed through. Any creature capable of suffering what he had suffered would not blanch at inflicting a bit of suffering on others. He knew who my loved ones were. He knew where they lived.

Almost as soon as I thought this, I rejected it as unworthy. No one could be so Machiavellian. Not even Machiavelli.

And the simple solution—to unbind him like any other vampire and have done with it—was not so simple, aside from being completely dishonorable. He had drunk gallons of my blood; it was part of him now. If I unbound him, might I do some damage to myself in the process? I had no way of knowing. There was no precedent for this. And now was not the time for figuring it all out, because people were staring at me and I wasn’t sure why. Had I been thinking aloud?

Zhang Guo Lao cleared up my confusion by politely inquiring if we had bonded sufficiently for a trip to Asgard.

“Oh. We have made excellent progress,” I replied, extremely relieved that this was all he wanted to know. “But more must be done, I’m afraid.”

“Tomorrow night, then,” Leif said, standing up and nodding at me, his face inscrutable. “I wish you all a good day.”

“Rest well,” Gunnar told him, and the others expressed similar sentiments. Leif bowed to us and left the circle of firelight, off to find someplace to hide from the sun.

Gunnar and I took a walk around the lake after dawn, when Leif was truly asleep.

“Are you still going through with it after that?” he asked with no preamble, sure that I would take his meaning.

“Leif seems certain I will.”

“Yes, he does. I don’t know what game he’s playing. I’m hoping it’s the kind where we’re on one side and the Norse are on the other.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Every man for himself.”

“Ah. Well, I can’t speak for him or what side he’s on. But I’m on your side,” I replied, and then tossed my chin at the other members of our party. “And I’m on theirs too.”

The alpha squinted at me. “So you don’t think we need to do anything?”

“Not right now. Let’s see what happens in round two.”

That began almost as soon as Leif rose after sundown. He asked me to talk with him a discreet distance away from the night’s campfire. Gunnar asked a question with his eyes, and I shook my head ever so slightly. He let us go alone.

We walked in silence along the lakeshore for perhaps a hundred yards, hands in pockets and staring at the ground. Leif seemed to be waiting for me to speak first, but he was the one who’d asked if we could talk. Finally he stopped and I stopped too, turning to face him.

“You have had the day to grow angry with me, and yet I still find myself here, head on my shoulders and with a stake-free chest,” he said. “You are a good man, Atticus.”

“And you are a charming vampire.”

He nodded ruefully. “I deserve that. I understand, I do. But I hope you realize that I did not make some kind of Freudian slip last night. I confessed it very purposefully.”

“For what purpose?”

“Complete candor between us.”

“How refreshing. Why tell me now?”

“Because that is what friends do, Atticus. It is true that when we first met I was playing a part. You had something I wanted, and befriending you was the only way to get it. But in that long process—our physical and verbal sparring matches, your attempts to modernize my language, actually fighting side by side—I discovered that I genuinely like you. And for several years now I have not had to act.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m having difficulty believing that. Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the correct one. And the simplest explanation is that you are a manipulative bastard like every other vampire.”

“Atticus, I had no need to say anything. You were going to fulfill your oath anyway. The simplest explanation for that—the only explanation—is that I wanted to say it, to give you my trust and pay you this compliment, to tell you freely that I value your friendship, I will not betray it, and I will hold nothing back from you again. I am tired of all my secrets.”

I still had my doubts, but that was clearly what he had wanted to say to me, and he expected me to buy it. Maybe I would later; his actions would prove him true or false. My best move was to accept his explanation and be wary. Perhaps he was truly being genuine with me, but there was no way I could fully trust him again, and I’d have to act the friend from now on.

“You wish to share your secrets?” I asked. I tilted my head and smirked. “Vampire secrets?”

Leif raised his hands by way of qualification. “Only with you. No one else can know.”

“So you’re saying I can ask you anything right now about vampires and you’ll answer it truthfully?” I was grinning.

He dropped his hands and sighed in resignation, believing he knew what was coming. “Go ahead,” he said dully.

“Tell me everything you know about the whereabouts of Theophilus.”

I caught a brief flash of genuine surprise. He’d thought I was going to ask him whether vampires poop or something unimportant like that. Why should such things matter? There were far weightier questions on my mind. If this mysterious Theophilus was truly older than me, then he’d probably know who was behind the old Roman pogrom against Druids. He might turn out to be the one behind it himself. Such a creature was worth seeking out.

“And no equivocations,” I added. “I want your best guess at where he is right now and how to make contact with him.”

“Do you intend to end his existence?” Leif asked.

“Not unless he gives me cause. I merely wish to chat.”

“He will wonder how you found him.”

“I’ll tell him I guessed.”

“He will know it is a lie. The quickening of your pulse, the tiny chemicals escaping from your skin, analysis of your expression—he will know someone told you and demand you reveal your source.”

“He can demand all he wants. He cannot take the information from me by force, Leif. You know this.”

“I do not,” Leif said, shaking his head emphatically.

“What do you mean? He’s telepathic?”

“I mean I sincerely do not know. I have never met him. My information on him is vague and extremely suspect.”

“Whatever. Bring it,” I said. “He’ll never know from me that you ever spoke a word.”

Leif flared his nostrils and exhaled heavily through them, frustrated. “He is said to divide his time between Greece, Vancouver, and a small tropical town in Australia called Gordonvale. He follows the clouds.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He wants overcast skies. He is supposedly so old, so powerful, that he is capable of walking abroad in daytime for brief periods if it is not full daylight.”

My eyebrows crept up my forehead. “Can you do this?”

“No. It takes a tremendous effort for me to remain awake past dawn, even in a sunless basement.”

“Hmm. You mentioned Greece. In what part of Greece?”

“Thessaloniki.”

I frowned. “That is not an especially overcast city.”

Leif shrugged. “My own private theory is that he is from there originally.”

That fit with his Greek name, anyway. I kept firing questions at Leif and watching him carefully for signs of prevarication. If he was lying, he was deucedly good at it. Whether they turned out to be true or not, they were leads, at least, something to pursue in the very coldest of cases. And his seeming candor allowed me to hope that perhaps he truly wished us to be friends.

We spent that night and the next telling stories of our respective pasts—sometimes jokes that didn’t make any sense when translated to English, sometimes adventures in distant lands and in cultures that have long since faded. We tried to top one another in The Weirdest Shit I Ever Ate contest (Väinämöinen won). Zhang Guo Lao pulled out his fish drum and tried to play something along with Väinämöinen’s kantele, but it turned out to be a clash of musical styles that’s best forgotten, sort of like Indonesian Folk Death Polka.

Leif didn’t ask to drink any of my blood, and I didn’t offer. Neither did anyone else. He seemed no worse off for it, so he clearly didn’t need to drink every evening.

After the third night of storytelling, I examined the bonds between us and saw that they had strengthened considerably. I felt I had a good grasp of who these men were now.

“Gentlemen, I believe we are ready,” I told them. “Tomorrow night, we will go to the Norse plane.”