Chapter Fourteen: Killer Instincts

The Juvechrome clinic had been welcoming, albeit in an imperious way – welcoming in the way a five-star hotel was welcoming. Juvechrome's corporate office was imposing in a different, non-welcoming way. It didn't occupy its own building; rather, it occupied the thirty-eighth through forty-first floors near the top of the big Glossa Combined building downtown. That was one of the tallest buildings in Palmetto City, topped only by the Bear Bank tower across from it and the Marchioness Czarina hotel a few blocks away. The tower was a spire of glass and steel drawn up like a big twisting block of taffy, slightly tapered toward the top with a big Glossa logo visible in the night.

Verne exited Maxie's old Volvo and walked right up to the front entrance, where a large man in a dark suit compared him against a picture on his tablet of Verne seated with Erasmus Moody at the Starlite All-Nite and keyed him inside. From there, Verne walked through the huge ground floor lobby, its cathedralic ceiling arching up to the fourth or fifth floor. The place was huge and empty, the one-inch heels of his shoes tapping against the polished floor and echoing high above. The foyer was empty, and Verne was alone, save for the bevy of covert and not-so-covert surveillance cameras studded about the walls and ceiling. And they were all watching him.

E: <Forty-first floor, dear. -EM,   came the text on his little vampire phone.

Verne summoned the elevator, pushed the button for the 41^st floor, and ding-ding-ding'ed his way up toward the waiting vampires. His phone read 9:57... he was going to be just a touch early. The elevator was full of the smell of Ellen's perfume, vanilla and roses, that Maxie had spritzed onto him. As the numbers on the elevator panel chimed up through the twenties, he reflected that vampires must not have the same visceral panic reaction that people had because, he was fairly certain, he should have been on the verge of vomiting. His palms should have been slick with sweat, his mouth sour with bile, little beads of perspiration on his forehead. And yet his heart kept to its same steady da... …thump every seven or eight seconds. It could be a strange thing, being a vampire.

The elevator made a final chime at the forty-first floor and the doors slid open with what seemed like deliberate slugishness. He walked across the lobby of the Juvechrome penthouse – not the Glossa penthouse, which was another four floors up, but the executive suites of the Juvechrome offices. The place was softly-lit but surprisingly active, with at least six people busily at work behind the various administrative desks. A youngish woman in a pinstripe skirt suit strutted up to Verne – she was a familiar, gauging from the tattoo on her wrist.

"The Masters are expecting you in ninety seconds," she said. Her expression was mostly neutral but betrayed a touch of... envy? Why? Because Verne was a vampire? "Follow me, please," she said.

Verne followed her down a long hallway, all dark slate, tinted glass, and chrome... it felt like some ancient, dark temple updated to befit the 21^st Century. Verne reached back to check his ponytail, realizing that his hair was in a neat little bun at the back of his head... it was strange how quickly he got used so some things about his radically-different self. The woman scanned her tattoo – or probably an RFID embedded beneath it – and the door eased open.

"Go inside, please," she said, and strutted right back down the hallway.

Those broad mahogany doors opened into a sumptuous meeting room, complete with a trickling koi pond and a little stone garden at one end, dotted with little bonsai trees atop plaster pedestals. The rest of the room contained about a dozen expensive-looking swivel chairs arranged in some seemingly-random but probably aesthetically-optimized pattern, and a huge digital screen that occupied most of the back wall. One portion of the screen displayed security footage – they'd no doubt been spying upon Verne his whole way up.

"Ah, our wayward little magpie," Erasmus Moody said. "The woman of the hour... man? No matter, Miss Verne, don't dawdle about darkening our doorway, come in and let's get a good look at you."

Erasmus Moody stood with two other vampires near the back of the room, milling around the koi pond. Verne could tell they were vampires because he could neither smell their blood nor hear the pulse of their hearts and arteries. The slow pulse of their vampire hearts was so slow it was easy to miss. He walked over to them, tapping across the polished slate of the floor. When he reached them, Erasmus fiddled about with his phone and the whole wall-spanning screen faded, revealing a great window overlooking the nighttime city. Verne's key eyesight could see how the trick was done: two panes of glass about an inch apart, one of them with little dimming slats that could shift the window from a slight tint up to complete blackout, and another pane implanted with tiny, almost-transparent LEDs that could project onto the back pane.

The other two vampires were a svelte Asian woman who appeared to be a few years older than Verne, and a blond, bearded man a few inches taller than Erasmus's 6'1" and substantially broader. Like Erasmus, he looked to be thirty or a bit older, though Verne knew that all three vampires were likely far, far older than they appeared.

"This one used to be a manchild?" the woman said. "Her? She's adorable!"

"She hungers," the  blond man said, his voice deep but surprisingly soft. He sniffed the air. "Do you smell it? Dog... tea... human... burning incense..."

"I believe that's marijuana," Erasmus speculated.

The other man nodded. "But no blood. She is turned."

"Turned, indeed, Master Arnold," Erasmus said. He strutted over to Verne and put a possessive hand upon his shoulder. Frankly, it creeped Verne out. "Young Miss Verne here finds herself at our dubious mercy. Let us forget for a moment the brazen theft of our product. Even barring that, she finds herself a vampire with no coven in the middle of our long-held territory. Such fledglings rarely last long in our woefully misguided world."

"Without protection, neophyte vampires find themselves crisped by the sun, or else murdered by mortals in the depth of their slumber," the woman said. She was slightly shorter than Verne and moved with a predatory grace. Her eyes were blood-red like Moody's and just as calculating, taking everything in as she prowled up to him. Verne was vaguely aware that he was in the middle of a master vampire shakedown. "What will you do for our protections, little one? Or should we end your short life here and have done with?" Her speech was clipped and precise, like that of an overly-strict English teacher, a stark contrast with Erasmus Moody's languid drawl.

"I thought we might have Miss Verne see to our Redmond problem, Mistress Xia. Think of it as a rite of initiation if you like."

"She's barely a vampire," Arnold said. He approached Verne, standing way too close for comfort and looking down, speaking right to Verne's face. "She'll botch it up, and we'll have to clean up after."

"I'm sure we can manage," Erasmus shrugged. "If she makes a stink of things, we'll freshen it up. We'll freshen all of it up." This last bit, he said with a glance toward Verne, making clear that 'all of it' included him, too. "And if not, it's clear sailing, my friends. N'est-ce pas?"

"I don’t like this," Arnold said. "We don't even know who her Master is."

"All of us are, I should think," Xia said. "I've followed up upon the theft with great interest, as you may have intuited. The missing batch was designated 'overflow'…"

Arnold laughed... but it was a cruel and humorless laugh. His suit was dark, his eyes were almost pure white, and Verne couldn't sense the slightest trace of warmth about him. "Overflow. In other words, he made himself into a vampire with our waste, and some damnable impurity in the stuff turned him female during the transformation."

"I cannot find fault in the end results," Erasmus said with a wink.

"Indeed, a step in the right direction," Xia added. "But you misconstrue... overflow and waste are not synonymous. Dr. Prowse, ever the pragmatic one, took the remainder of our offerings whenever they went above the container constraints and added them to an overflow receptacle. Waste not want not, as the saying goes. Thus, Vera dosed herself with some admixture of venom from any of the twelve vampires contributing to the effort... probably most of us. The other side of his transformation to her, I suspect, has something to do with a curious medical condition and nothing whatsoever with hodgepodge venom. I'm very interested to find out what, exactly, the repercussions of all this are and am, therefore, inclined to agree with you upon this, Master Erasmus."

"Indeed. I thought the curiosity of it might tickle you." Moody looked very pleased with himself, slicking his mustache and glancing toward Arnold with a twinkle in his blood-red eyes. "Shall we three vote upon it, then?"

"Nay," Arnold said quickly.

"Aye," Xia said.

Erasmus tapped his nose. "I'm with you for once," he said. "Aye... and two bests one. We turn our collective daughter of the night upon our little errand and, if we like the results, welcome her into the fold."

+++++

It wasn't the first time that Verne had heard of Benton Redmond. Indeed, he had some legitimate beef with the man. Redmond was the COO of Caducea, the health provider that Verne had been covered under for his entire childhood. The CPVDI – the Clandest Pediatric Vascular Disease Initiative – had provided health care for all of the NVC kids as part of the initiative. All their care - checkups, pills, scans, bloodwork, neurological exams, drug trials, and even minor surgery got covered via Caducea. Major procedures, though, needed approval.

Sometime around the time of Verne's diagnosis with NVC, a new surgical technique called 'Choroid Net Stinting' had been developed for stroke and stroke-risk patients, and NVC kids fit the bill just right. The surgery wouldn't cure NVC, but it strengthened the weakest parts of the brain's circulatory system and, according to some analyses, added one and a half to two years of symptom-free living onto NVC patients' lives. Verne's parents had requested the procedure for Verne dozens of times, submitting petition after petition to Caducea and ratcheting ever higher up the chain of command until their petition landed on the desk of Benton Redmond, who'd responded with something along the lines of:

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Vera,

I appreciate the situation you've found yourselves in and can only imagine the heartbreak and tribulations of raising a child with a terminal illness. We at Caducea are committed to providing the best and most cutting-edge treatments to all of our patients, including those receiving discount health plans through charitable foundations. However, the Chorizo Net Stinting [sic] technique is not proven and provides too great a risk to subject a young patient to for no reasonable expectation of gain. This surgery requires weeks of recovery, poses a threat to patient health that is not insignificant, and comes with a $150,000 price tag. If you are determined to get this procedure for your daughter [sic], I suggest you utilize the time spent sending petitions to my office to save up for this (in my opinion) expensive and egregious procedure.

Best of Luck,

Benton Redmond,
COO, Caducea Advantage

That had been the end of Verne's pursuit of a Choroid Net Stint procedure. But he'd never forgotten about Benton Redmond and the letter he'd sent Verne's parents. He probably still had that letter somewhere in his old medical forms, frayed at the folds and slightly warped from the tears he'd cried onto it, wondering why this distant and imperious man could deny him the surgery to extend his short life by two years.

For all Verne knew, Redmond was a completely decent man who was just jaded by his job, bearing no particular ill will to anybody. Still, it would be inaccurate to call Verne completely dismayed when he learned that the vampires wanted Redmond dead. He inferred that Glossa was interested in purchasing Caduceus and that Redmond was in the way somehow... and that the vampire way of doing things didn't involve much bribery, bargaining, or even threats. They viewed the mortals in their way as impediments to remove with extreme prejudice.

"You want me to kill Benton Redmond?" Verne asked. "But I've never killed anyone before."

"And for how long do you think that will remain the case? You're a vampire, my dear," Erasmus Moody said. He escorted Verne to a smaller conference room, coal-black chairs, an onyx-black table, and dark tinted glass. "We are predators to the very core. There's no shame in it. Now… Charles has an eye for wardrobe, so I trust this will fit you. I can stand outside if you'd like to preserve your modesty..."

A little brown bag from Vidi Clothiers sat upon the conference table. Verne saw satiny black and dark lace in there. "You want me to change? Into this? In here?"

Erasmus nodded, looking Verne up and down. "Unless you think you can bluff your way into the man's penthouse apartment looking like you're interviewing for his marketing department. Tout suite, Miss Verne – mortals follow a schedule, even if we do not."

If Verne thought he felt ridiculous in Ellen Gomez's interview outfit, he was outright mortified at the contents of the Vidi Clothier's bag: one evening gown, silken, black; two (2) ankle-strap pumps, 3" heel; one pair lace panties, black, thong; one 32D bra, black, lace, push-up; one clutch, black with silver accents; two bracelets, platinum; two (2) earrings, clip-on, dark sapphire 2 ct; two (2) hair clips, silver w/ onyx. The whole outfit must have cost many thousands of dollars... but, as Erasmus Moody had recently told Verne, the vampires didn't want for money.

After Verne was done dressing himself, and before he was used to the feeling of his boobs being pushed up toward his chin or of his butt cheeks being split in a state of permanent wedgie, and before he got over the feeling that he was wearing a black, swishy, almost-nothing of a dress, Erasmus popped back in with Charles to see to his hair and other stylings.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Erasmus said. "I know you people are good with feminine touches..."

"You people?" Verne whispered.

"He thinks I'm gay," Charles stated. He was blond, mid-30s, and impeccably-dressed – but, in Verne's experience, that basically made being gay a 50-50 proposition. Some straight guys had good style, too.

"Are you? Gay, I mean. You seem to know what you're doing with my hair."

"None of your business, miss," Charles said. Then his eyes went wide. "Sorry... forgot you were a vampire..."

"No, you're right, it's none of my business. Please forget I asked."

"I had daughters, that's all. They're grown now, but I've had to do just about every curl and braid in the book. And I know more about horses than I even knew there was to know."

Verne turned to look at him – dark blond, clean-shaven, dark-eyed, and betraying no hint of age beyond a very slight creasing at the forehead and maybe three silver hairs. "Another question to ignore if it's impertinent – how old are you, Mr. Barrett?"

"Done! Not too bad for a rush job." He smiled, flashing perfect teeth. "I'll be fifty-four next month. That's one of the perks of being a familiar. Decent salary, and I age at maybe a third the normal rate. I just have to put up with a few little eccentricities..."

"Your Master Erasmus is making me kill somebody, Mr. Barrett. If I don't, he's going to have me killed. Is that a 'little eccentricity'?"

Before Charles could respond, Erasmus strode back into the room. He'd heard their whole conversation, of course – his hearing was just as good as Verne's. "Perspective, Miss Verne. Listen to Charles. If you set yourself to consternation over mortal concerns, you'll have a short and sad immortality. Our familiars may find us peculiar and old-fashioned..." he looked meaningfully toward Charles... "but we're fond of them all the same. I had one familiar for one hundred thirty-eight years – a slave on the plantation become a trusted friend and confidant for almost seven score years! Some, if they're lucky, will even come to join our ageless race. But these other folk, normal mortals, are flashes in the pan... it's like fretting over what to do with a cooped chicken. You may not like the bloody business of farm work, Miss Verne, but the ruminations of chickens are much ado about nothing. So long as we're good stewards, they'll reliably deliver eggs and drumsticks to our table, bless their hearts, but we cannot let their clucking over corn override our greater perspectives and concerns. As the kids say, Miss Verne, 'can you dig it?'"

Verne rolled his eyes. "I can dig it."

"Good." Erasmus extended his hand and escorted Verne from the room. "In that case, a-hunting you shall go. I have other matters to tend to – the work of a Master vampire is never done – but I shall keep myself closely apprised of your progress."

+++++

One of Charles's guys escorted Verne down to a black limo, taking sidelong glances at him the whole time. Whether envious, amorous, or just nervous, Verne couldn't tell. Then the limo drove Verne exactly four blocks down Central Palmetto to the district of big glitzy beachfront high-rises that the high rollers lived in. The driver came around to open the door, and Verne stepped out into the night, the black satin of the dress swirling about him, his shoulder-length hair fluffing in the cool breeze. He ought to have been chilly, but instead he just felt half-naked, the wind going right through the dress's fabric, grasping at his little clutch like a shield as he approached the Venetian Towers where Benton Redmond lived.

He was an assassin, Verne realized. A vampire assassin. When the doorman smiled at him, he smiled back, and then the man opened the door, wide and welcoming. He kept walking, his attention focused on the elevator at the end of the lobby. He ignored the concierge... what kind of apartment building had a concierge? One for super rich people, Verne figured. These weren't people like the Veras... these people were three or four economic strata up, insulated in their penthouses, in their bubbles of fantastic wealth. And Verne was now a rich lure, beautiful and sleek and dressed up to resemble one of them. He caught a glimpse of himself in the elevator mirror and gasped. He was dressed, very convincingly, as a very high-class escort.

"Floor, miss?" the elevator guy asked. Of course, they had an elevator guy, too.

"Um," Verne said. "Twenty-five, please."

"Penthouse suite," the man said with a wry grin. And Verne could practically feel the guy's eyes on his ass... it felt dirty. This blood-filled meatbag leering at his body like some sort of sex meat... "Twenty-five, miss."

"Thanks," Verne said, smiling as sweetly as he could as he stepped out. What in the hell had that been about? His thinking was going crazy. He shook his head, willing himself to focus.

There were only two suites on the 25^th floor, massive 3500 square-foot penthouses, both of them with roof access and views overlooking the ocean and the city. Verne confirmed the suite on his little vampire phone: 25-B. He clacked along in his little black heels, his balance surprisingly good in the things... a possible benefit of being a vampire? The door was large and white, with carved wood all around the frame, and a doorbell recessed within a sculpted stone façade... the door of somebody with more money than fashion sense. He pressed the doorbell and waited.

"I was worried you weren't going to show," the man said. He was tallish, somewhere in his fifties, and had the beginnings of a gut, but not much of one. His blue eyes took Verne in, vaguely possessive.

"Traffic," Verne said. "Sorry about that... actually, I think my driver was stoned."

The man shrugged. He offered his hand and, when Verne accepted, gently pulled him into the premises. "Benton Redmond," he said. "You can call me Benton tonight... I'm not into games, just good times. Would you care for a drink...?"

"Vera," Verne said. He took a few steps into the place, spotting a well-appointed alcohol cabinet in between the kitchen and the sunken living area. "Thanks, Benton. Whiskey, if you've got it."

"Do I ever," Redmond said. "Make yourself comfortable."

Verne sat on the wrap-around couch, giving it an experimental bounce. It was slate-gray, very soft, and had about twenty throw pillows arrayed around it. Redmond handed Verne a glass, his finger running along Verne's hand as he handed him the glass. "Scotch. Glenfiddich reserve special 1962," he said.

Verne nodded, pretending to be suitably impressed. He took a sip, and it tasted like... whiskey and a hint of ashes. Not completely undrinkable, but definitely too gross to have more than a few sips. Figuring out which things tasted normal and which didn't when he was 'unsated' was going to take some work. Tea? Yes. Coffee? Sure. Scotch? Not quite. He forced another sip.

"It's an acquired taste," Redmond said, a hint of derision in his voice. Verne's reaction must have been pretty evident.

"I usually have it in whiskey sours," Verne said sweetly.

"Oh?" Redmond seemed amused. "I'm guessing you're a student, Vera? What do you study?" He sat next to Verne on the couch, his eyes taking all of his feminine curves in, his hand sliding across Verne's shoulders, fingers touching lightly upon his exposed clavicle.

"Um," Verne said. "Nursing."

Redmond got a chuckle out of that. "Is that so? Looking to meet a handsome plastic surgeon? Okay, Vera, how about a demonstration of your bedside manner?"

Redmond finished off his scotch and slid over to Verne, torso to torso, his one arm sliding from Verne's shoulder to grab his bicep and the other reaching for Verne's knee and sliding up a smooth thigh. Verne froze up for a moment, right until Redmond's finger snaked along his panties and hooked over the lacy fabric of the band. Then something in Verne snapped. He shifted and twirled with surprising speed, mounting Redmond's waist in one swift motion.

"Well, that was unexpected," Redmond chuckled, looking up from the couch, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. He put his hands on Verne's waist, preparing to lift him off, presumably to position himself for sex.

Verne's hands clamped over Redmond's wrists with far more force than a slim call girl could possibly muster. The man looked up with a flicker of mounting horror just in time for Verne to plunge down and sink his lengthening fangs into the man. At first Redmond pushed and pounded against Verne, far too feebly to fight off a starving vampire. Then, as Verne felt the first gushing bloom of euphoric blood, he injected soporific venom into the man, enough that Redmond audibly sighed and went limp beneath him. Verne gulped hot fluid down, his belly filling, the lifeblood satisfying a craving so deep it seemed to be imprinted upon Verne's very soul. He drank and drank until his belly was physically full. He disengaged with a smack, burped, and giggled, half-delirious.

"Shit!" Verne gasped.

Redmond was pale, limp, and very clearly dying. Verne had just drained him of half his blood... though, strangely enough, Redmond still had a very visible erection against his trousers. Verne recalled his instructions – do whatever you like, so long as the first thing the police think isn't 'vampire attack'. Verne found the master bath, filling the tub with hot water, and then hauled Redmond over with no difficulty at all. It was easy to forget about how strong vampires were until you actually used that power, either accidentally or on purpose. Redmond was close to two hundred pounds, and the biggest inconvenience was how floppy he was. Verne could have lifted a lot more. He stripped the man of his clothes and eased him into the tub.

Verne took a deep breath. He'd known why he was there but, even so, he hadn't meant to attack Redmond. Sure, the man had come across as a bit sleazy, a bit condescending, but he hadn't been the comic book villain that Verne might have hoped for. Just a rich guy with a bit of entitlement. He'd treated Verne civilly, and had behaved exactly in the manner of a man enjoying his time with an expensive escort. If Verne had balked at his forward behavior, Redmond might well have sent Verne home and demanded a refund and nothing more... but Verne had panicked, instincts had kicked in, and now the man was dying. But he wasn't dead. If Verne cut his wrists, there would be little doubt that he, and not just predatory instincts, had some deliberate role in killing the man.

Verne rummaged about the bathroom, eventually finding a straight razor. Of course a guy like Redmond used a straight razor. Verne lifted Redmond's wrist and held the razor over it, listening to Redmond's breaths, shallow and growing-shallower and more-ragged, his heartbeat feeble and fluttering in his chest: dathumpdathumpdathump. Verne slit one wrist and then the other, watching the man's remaining blood plume out into the water. With Windex and a tissue, he wiped his prints from the place: the bathroom, the living area, the razor (which he placed in Redmond's limp hand), even the doorbell. Anything he might have conceivably touched. Then, tears streaming down his cheeks, he waited for three more torturous minutes as Benton Redmond died. It seemed like the right thing to do. He only left when he heard Redmond's heart slow... slow... and finally stop with a final pathetic spasm. On his way out, Verne stopped by the coffee table and downed the rest of his glass of scotch. It was smooth and oh-so-wonderful.

OvidLemma

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