Chapter Thirty-Four: No Rest for the Dead

If ever there was a time to take a mental health day, it was today, but Vera didn't do so. She couldn't quite explain why… maybe she just needed something like normalcy back in her crazy life. Regardless, she left the folks at Maxie's to deal with the body while she changed out of her torn and bloody clothes. She called work to tell Ram that she was going to be fifteen minutes late on account of a family crisis.

"Do you, um… I can get somebody to pick up your shift," he said.

"I'm not going to miss my fourth day back," she said. "I'll be there at eleven fifteen."

And so, not one hour after nearly getting murdered by and eventually murdering an elder vampire (in self-defense!), Vera took the N2 South to work. She sat there on the bus, watching the little beachside suburbs pass, and then the outskirts of the city proper, neat little low-rises, gas stations, and expressway hotels passing by in the rain. It bothered Vera that she felt nothing, that any one of her friends might have been killed, that Maxie still might die, and that they'd dug themselves from deep shit into much, much deeper shit. And, she realized, she didn't feel nothing. She had no pounding heart, no dry mouth, no gutted-empty feeling, but she was anguished inside. No wonder vampires often had anger issues - there was no physiological outlet to vent their emotions. And - wonderful - now Vera was openly crying on the bus, vibrant violet tears tumbling down like watercolors.

"Are you okay, hon?" the woman behind her asked. "Need to talk about it?"

Vera nodded and proceeded to divulge as much as she could, changing the details to something a regular person might relate to. She told the woman how she'd been partly responsible for a massive fuck-up at 'work' when she tried to correct a 'co-worker's' major mistake and her 'boss' had found out about the mistake and holed them all up in a 'hotel' near the 'main office' to make sure word didn't get out while the company investigated, and how she'd been sexually harassed by her boss and some other higher-ups at the hotel and how the rest of the employees knew and didn't care. And when she finally got home, one of the 'company investigators' was waiting for her - he'd gotten close to the truth and aimed to blackmail her. So she'd gotten him 'fired' and needed to cover up the evidence for that, as well.

"I'm stupid," Vera sobbed. Far more violet streaked down her cheeks than she could ever pretend was mascara. "I'm so fucking stupid! I should have never helped. I should have just gone with everything and shut my fucking mouth, and now I'm in such deep shit. I have no idea what to do!"

She realized with a start that she now had the rapt attention of the entire bus, the driver included. She tried to recall whether she'd divulged any vampire-y details and honestly couldn't remember. The woman behind her put a hand on Vera's shoulder.

"You can't let the bastards get you down, Vera, honey. They'll fuck with your head, fuck with your emotions, and they expect you to pretend that everything's fine. But it isn't fine. You tried to do the right thing… maybe you fucked up, but sometimes that happens, even when we mean well… and then you got date raped by your boss. He's the asshole here… if I knew who he was, I'd tear him a new one."

"He's really important," Vera sniffled.

"Yeah, and how'd he get important?" a man in construction getup piped in. "These assholes think they're above every fuckin' person, and they do fucked up shit to get to where they are. If you worked for me, yeah, maybe I'd treat you like a princess, but I wouldn't ever look at you improperly. Who assaults an employee - a beautiful woman? Nobody deserves that. So you've got to do what you gotta do to take the asshole down. Whatever it is, you do it. You know that, right?"

Vera managed a smile. "Yeah. I guess I do. Oh! This is my stop! Bye!"

"Bye, Vera!" everybody on the bus called back.

After work, Vera headed back to Maxie's. The events of that morning seemed like a bad dream… but the moment she went inside, it was all too obvious that it had been real. It still smelled faintly of blood, human and vampire, as well as a number of cleaning solutions. There was a throw rug over the carpet on the spot where they'd killed Suleiman. There was a chair missing from the semi-repaired dining table, scuffmarks from shifted furniture, and several cracked or dented parts of the wall had been imperfectly repaired. The house still bore the scars of their altercation.

Vera stepped inside, realizing with a start that she'd asked no permission to enter, and that she didn't feel at all unwelcome. This was a home to her now, she realized. That was a good feeling. Maxie met her in the kitchen area, hobbling in on one of Gloria's canes. Her face was ashen and her ankle was bandaged, but she was alive. Vera could hear the faint hint of irregularity in her heartbeat, could smell the slightly-off scent of her blood.

"I'm so sorry, Maxie," Vera said.

Maxie smiled weakly. "Not your fault, Vera. We're dealing with big league shit, and sometimes that means bad stuff happens to good people." She chuckled. "Or, in this case, me. We still don't know if I'll turn…"

"You will," Vera said quickly. She reached for Maxie's hand, cool and slightly sweaty, and gave it a squeeze. "Sorry, but I can already smell it on you."

"Shit… well, Gloria's researching it. We'll see if we can undo the venom with witchcraft."

"Maybe?" Vera shrugged. She helped Maxie to the couch - the one without the wooden backboard snapped and sagging - and the two of them sat down, Maxie's dark eyes were worried, pleading. "Has anybody ever undone a turning before?"

Maxie shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I guess that means no more veganism for me. No more sun. No more witchcraft… fuck…" she was crying.

"You've barely started turning," Vera said. "I could dose you - you'd be more like Lisa, more powerful than a vampire turned by Suleiman. You could still go in the sun if you sunscreened up. Holy places wouldn't be as bad. And I bet you could do witchcraft when you're blood-sated."

"I'm not going to drink blood, Vera."

"Then you'll go insane, and then you will drink blood, and you won't be able to control who you drink it from. You'd be better off if I killed you now."

Maxie held Vera's hand and looked at her for a long moment. "Somehow, you're still a good person, Vera," she said. "I'd rather be turned by you than some crazy asshole we had to kill. Maybe I'll die, regardless. And, if I don't, we'll take it a day at a time." With a rattle of beads, she tossed her hair back, exposing her neck. "Dose me, chica."

"I… um, I can do your wrist."

"Probably better that way," Maxie agreed. She slid her bracelets up to her forearm. "Oh! I almost forgot to give this to you. If I'm not going to do witchcraft any more, I thought I'd go out with a bang…"

She unclasped a bracelet and handed it to Vera - the triune amulet. It had been recharged… only, instead of being jade green, it was an inky violet-black. Vera could sense seriously weird vibes coming off the thing, like there was some pressure built up inside of it waiting to explode. She turned it over in her hands.

"You recharged it with Suleiman's blood?" she asked.

"Smart girl," Maxie said. "I did just that. And boy has the essence of dying vampire got a lot of punch. When it's triggered, anybody within a yard or so will get a hell of a jolt. It should even down pretty powerful vampires. And, seeing as how you're a lot more likely than me to run into them, at least for now, I thought you could use the damn thing. Just promise me you won't get yourself killed doing something stupid."

"No promises. Hell, I might get myself killed trying to do something smart." Vera slid the bracelet on. She leaned forward and lifted Maxie's wrist to her mouth. "I really hope this works."

+++++

"Coffee?" Maxie asked.

"Sure," Vera said, and she helped herself to a mug. Coffee still managed to make her feel more alert, though she was pretty sure the effect was entirely psychological. She was beginning to feel the pangs of bloodlust after two days with almost nothing, and she'd have to get something more than coffee before work if she was to be functional and safe to be around. Maxie didn't look so hot, either. "Got any of the turning pangs yet?"

"Oh yeah," Maxie sighed. "I took like four tabs of Ellen's Midol and it didn't do a goddamn thing. It looks like I'm going to die."

"Everybody dies," Vera said. "But vampires get to keep doing stuff after that."

"If they're lucky."

"If you're lucky," Vera agreed. But she had high hopes - she had a 100% success rate thus far with her sample size of 1 and was hoping to keep up the streak. "You're going to want raw, red meat soon, if you don't already… and after that, you're going to need blood. Make sure you have some nearby. It doesn't have to be human blood, but it's a lot better. And, on that note, I have to figure out a meal before work, so I'd better GTFO. Good luck, Maxie."

"Yeah."

The storm had abated overnight, and the sun rose bright and warm and clear. When Vera left for work, it was in her darkest sunglasses and with her skin glistening with sunscreen, a hoodie and tight jeans covering most of her body. Even so, people on the bus recognized her - four or five of the passengers from yesterday were on the same bus today, and they were all eager to know how Vera was. She felt embarrassed about it - she'd told them a lie with only a token connection to real events, and suddenly they were rooting for her. The thing was, she wasn't sure whether she was the good guy in reality - sure, she'd killed some bad people, assuming you counted vampires as people, but some of them weren't all that bad.

"Things are okay, I guess. But I'm worried that my one coworker is going to get fired over it. I'd say it's fifty-fifty," she said. She worried about Maxie… about whether she'd survive and, if so, how she'd cope with such a massive change to her life. Un-life, rather.

"You're a good storyteller," one of the passengers said. "You should start a blog. Or a podcast. I'd listen."

"I'll think about it." Could a vampire have a podcast?

Vera felt bad about visiting Longstreet before work, but she needed to feed. So, against her better judgment, she went two stops beyond her work stop, tracked down the nearest gathering of junkies along Glenn Row, and offered a killer high for some blood. She told herself that vampire venom might actually help them beat their habit. She had no idea whether it was true, but it was plausible at least. She gave a bit of the crimson on top of the decent dose of yellow venom that opiate addicts needed. From what Lisa had told her, the yellow got them high for a few hours and the cravings were gone for at least a day after… so it was community service in a way. She wandered into work twenty minutes later, trying to wave off the combined effects of cheap alcohol, weed, and Benadryl, messing up the settings on her first scan of the day three times before her head started to clear enough for proper focus.

Things were starting to get back to normal. Vera let herself think that - that maybe she could go weeks or months without having to think about what had happened over the past few weeks, that she could establish a new normal in her life. She let herself think, as she plugged her ears before setting up the PET scanner, that maybe the coven would find Suleiman's body, attributed it to some other group of vampires, and they'd forget about the two pretty youngbloods drawn into events by pure chance. She thought that until she left work and saw Carrie's SUV limo idling outside of the Imaging East building. Carrie opened the door and gestured for Vera to get inside.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Carrie said.

Vera tugged at the sleeve of her scrubs. "Work."

"Work? For fuck's sake, girl, do you have any idea what kind of shitstorm is brewing right now?"

"Not really. I… look, I just want to go home. This is too much shit for me to deal with right now."

Carrie snorted, lifting her sunglasses enough to make eye contact with Vera. "Is that so? Well I wouldn't want to inconvenience you, but Lady Clandest called an emergency meeting at the temple and we're needed ASAP. You weren't responding to our messages."

"I… um, I forgot my phone. I was worried somebody might be tracking us."

"Yeah, maybe so," Carrie said. She tapped on the glass and their driver pulled out onto Almstreet Boulevard, picking up another vampire from the front of the Juvechrome building when they passed it.

They proceeded out to the swamps, out to the coven temple. They took a convoluted back back-road that Vera couldn't pretend to follow, even with her keen vampire vision, pulling off of rural route 27 and twisting and turning along a little bumpy nothing of a road until - voila! - they pulled into the modest temple parking lot, already half-full of luxury vehicles, sports cars, and a beat-up Winnebago. It was dusk, half an hour past sunset, and even the youngest vampires could wander outside with impunity now. Carrie met Ebony at the side entrance of the temple, and they embraced, Ebony's perfect chocolate complexion streaked with even darker tears.

"You heard about Suleiman?" she whispered.

Shit. They knew.

+++++

Well… they knew something. As she walked through the great, dark expanse of the temple, Vera forced herself to center her emotions. Just like before, if they'd actually known about her involvement, they wouldn't have picked her up in a luxury limo and driven her out to the temple. Whatever they'd have done, it would have been a lot less comfortable. As they approached, the attendant familiars pulled the doors to the chapel open, the lights from the parlor bathing them in an ominous red glow. From there, they proceeded to the black chapel.

There, upon the high stage, Lady Clandest sat upon a great black throne, rendered in wrought iron, obsidian, and midnight-black satin. To either side of her, on smaller thrones, sat the masters who ruled under her: Erasmus Moody, Xia, and Arnold. They were cloaked, wore little glittering circlets upon their heads, and looked deadly serious. Vera looked around for Lisa but couldn't see her. Hopefully, she was safe at Maxie's and far from whatever the hell this was. As Vera's little contingent of youngbloods filed into the chapel, Lady Clandest made a subtle nod and the doors boomed shut, heavy bolts slotting in from the other side. Vera wished she had Lisa's hand to squeeze, or any other source of comfort - she was trapped in the chapel with… a quick count suggested twenty-two vampires. That left Lisa and only one other missing and, it seemed, they weren't expected to show.

"Twenty-two is a fortuitous number," Lady Clandest stated, motionless upon her throne. Her voice echoed clear and crystalline through the vault. "Twenty-one and one means fifteen votes to reach agreement, three by five. Our adherence to our Lord's will proves provident, for we are righteous and in our faith shall we be victorious. Two of ours have died and now one other, two young one old. Your Lady seeks to taste revenge… and what of you, my children, my subjects? Do you desire sweet revenge?"

"Yes, my Lady!" the vampires stated. it was almost a chant, and Vera repeated it quickly enough not to be embarrassed.

"Good! Then we shall taste it tonight… but only to whet your appetite." Sophia Clandest gestured in Vera's direction. "Bring the traitor forward!"

Vera started to bolt, realizing at the last second that somebody was being brought up behind her. She hoped she'd passed it off as surprise and trying to move out of the way - because she was certainly surprised and didn't want to be anywhere near whatever was happening. Two vampires escorted a bewildered woman to the dais. She didn't struggle against them, but Vera could tell she was a vampire, so she could have put up a fight if she wanted to. She wore a slim, brown trench coat at least fifty years out of date and a broad-brimmed hat with a big, purple feather in it.

"I am not a traitor, my lady!" the woman said. Her voice wavered with fear.

"Tasmin, you have long been an outsider in our coven - that much is no mystery. Barely ever in the area, no interest in coven affairs… I haven't heard you take a strong stance on anything in decades. Yet I sought no quarrel with you. None of us did. Yet your familiars tell us you're in truck with Charleston." Clandest hissed at the city's name, as did several other of those present. "They are our rivals, yet you make overtures to their leadership. Would you deny it?"

"I…  do not, my Lady. My… my familiars… are they all right?"

"Some of them," Clandest said. "I care not for the well-being of mortals. What are they but chaff to us? And some are grains to crack, and the cracked grain is good, for they've yielded truth today. You admit to your treachery!"

Tasmin dropped to her knees. "No treachery, my lady," she said. The hat fell from her head, and Vera could see a head of soft brown curls… and, when her head turned slightly, a woman who looked to be in her thirties with dark tears streaking her face. "I… I find myself drawn further south. I sent entreaties to join their coven, to enter their territory… this is permitted, is it not?"

"It is permitted," Xia stated, her concerned attention turning to Sophia Clandest. "Is it not, my Lady? Are we not free to seek other territories if our current riding displeases us?"

"We are," Clandest agreed. "But why were none of us informed? And on the eve of three of our brothers murdered at the hands of powerful vampires? This is more coincidence than I can accept. No, I say to all present here that I know the bad blood that flows between Palmetto and Charleston, and I know they've plotted against me for years now. They have  long waited to usurp our riding, and now they spring their traitor's trap. But I would declare vendetta upon these wastrels!" she stood and spat on Tasmin, little flecks of white and violet coursing through the air. "My children, I request vendetta. I need fifteen! Would fourteen of you would see it done?"

"I would," Master Arnold said.

"Please!" Tasmin cried.

"And I," Moody said. Mistress Xia shook her head and drew the hood of her cloak up - she would not support vendetta.

Then the vote swept about the room, each vampire voting yea, or else retreating a step back to indicate no confidence. Vera counted along with the votes: five… eight… twelve… thirteen… and suddenly, she realized, all eyes were upon her. She was the last vote. The fifteenth and deciding vote of the proceeding. She took a deep breath and glanced toward the dais, toward the expectant gazes of Sophia Clandest and the masters. Mistress Xia shook her head. And Erasmus Moody lifted his finger to his face and tapped his nose: you know what to do, his gesture said. And Vera did know what to do.

"I support vendetta," she said. Her voice echoed through the hall with a shrill finality.

"Vendetta is declared," Sophia Clandest said. "Hold the traitor, and I shall give her a severance - if she wants to join Charleston, she can be the first to taste their comeuppance."

"No, my Lady! I am loyal! Please!" Tasmin wailed. And Vera felt absolutely terrible about it - for all she knew, this was a completely innocent vampire (well… insofar as any vampires were ever innocent) who simply wanted to move further south. And now something terrible was going to happen to her.

Very terrible, indeed. Erasmus and Arnold held her arms, their strength sufficient to prevent Tasmin from fleeing. Xia unsheathed a dark blade and handed it to the Lady, who inspected its point and found it to her liking. Tasmin made a final, desperate wail and then Clandest plunged the blade into her chest, cutting through vampiric cartilage with a sickening crack, prying her chest apart even as she gurgled out a half-shriek, and then the Lady pulled Tasmin's dark and still-beating heart from her chest, biting into the organ and then raising it in the air with a triumphant fist, her pretty, pale face streaked black with vampire blood.

"Revenge!" she shouted, and poor Tasmin tumbled unceremoniously down the dais stairs, lifeless, her heartless chest soaked in blood.