Confessions of a Vampire

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dusty air shimmered and became one and then three eddies in the gloom of the room, whorling the heavy dust across the top of the piano. I stepped into the music room of the house in Washington and was followed immediately by Jody and Johan.

I turned immediately to face my younger companions and smiled. "You're now in Washington, D. C." Johan watched me expectantly as if he waited for a revelation; Jody simply yawned. "It's also still quite light outside," I offered.

"Why, Sir?" the American asked, voicing his feigned boredom and I permitted myself to wonder how to reach the boy and keep his attention. Jody Renfroe faded in and out on me with no discernible pattern. At least, he was now remembering to honour me with my title when he addressed me - even if it did sound as if he were being snide when he used it.

"America is six hours behind Germany," Johan offered, happily exhibiting another of those titbits of esoteric knowledge he'd learned. "It was 2300 hours when we left Berlin; it is 1700 here. The American capital is closer to the equator also, and that makes the heat of the sun hotter-" He glanced to me. "This is not so, mein Herr?"

I nodded and felt old at this explaining everything to these children. I shrugged the feeling away immediately. There was much I had to do and changing nappies on lost vampires was not one of them.

"You need stay inside here during the day - or be with me," I told them. "You will not go off exploring or do stupid things that bring suspicion down on us."

The blond immediately stiffened. "Now, wait a minute - Sir," he growled, barely remembering the honorific in time to use it.

"No, Jody - you wait. We are here to find Tom. To help him hunt down these monsters who attacked us. That is why I came - and why you did as well.

"You're no longer children to go off and explore on your own, ignoring others - even threatening others as well as yourselves. You need remember what you are at all times - what you can do and mortals can't. You need take responsibility for your protection - and our privacy. We are an unknown quantity in this world and it's to our advantage to keep it that way-"

"Yeah?"

"Are you ready to have every scientist in the world queuing up to draw your blood?" I asked, hoping this American was like most youth the world over and hated submitting to medical queries as to his health. I had hoped correctly - he shuddered.

"Or perhaps you would like the organised bigots in this country trying out methods to kill you?"

"Kill me?" he asked suspiciously.

"If you are real, Jody Renfroe, you are defined as evil by the bigots who have taken over that dead rabbi's religion. To every Christian, evil is to be avoided; to the most fundamentalist of them, it needs be destroyed."

"Jesus!"

"Avoid showing your powers before mortals and they'll continue to believe we don't exist."

"You're telling me to act like you do, Sir?" There was no snideness now he used the proper address.

"In public, you need be responsible," I told him more gently. "You need act like a mortal."

"What have I done that shows me up as a space alien?"

"Playing leap over the barn is not exactly something the average mortal can do," I managed to tell him and keep a smile from my face.

Red blotches spread over his face as he lowered his eyes. "I guess I do act a little childish now and then," he mumbled. "Can I at least show Hans my room in my own house?"

I smiled slowly. "We've got several hours before we'd do anything. Go. Show Johan your house." I made my face a stern mask. "But stay inside and don't call in any of your old friends."

The Czech grinned. "We are in America incognito, yes?" I nodded.

"Touch my thoughts, Hans," the American told him. "See my room there." A moment later, the two boys dematerialised and I was alone.

I sat at the piano and opened the keyboard. And relaxed. I had not realised just how tightly knotted I had become until I recognised the music my fingers had begun to make. Mars bringer of war expanded into the room, rising to spread through the house. There were no demons dancing about me as they had when Lynda Renfroe appeared at my door in Berlin. The sense of something being wrong and the dread that sense spread in me was gone.

The dread and fear were gone from me; disintegrating as the past week had begun to unfold before me. Collapsing as reality replaced foreboding. In their place was an anger that would destroy what had risen to threaten the idyll my life had become this past year.

I lost myself in the sense of the music that surrounded me. The serenity it gave me now I was poised for combat.

"You came."

I jerked at the voice only centimetres from my ear, the spell of the music forgotten as chords mixed discordantly and I turned to face Tom MacPherson. He was grinning at me.

"You could have made a noise to announce yourself," I grumbled as I stood.

His grin broadened. "It's a lot more fun to sneak up on you, Karli. I like to see you jump like that." He reached out his hands to me and I took them to rise to my feet and allow him to draw me to him.

I kissed both his cheeks before brushing his lips with mine.

The smile faded as memory returned and he pulled back enough to gaze at me. "You've buried Emil?"

"He's not dead."

His eyes widened with disbelief and he studied me closely. "He lives?" he asked finally.

"His body repaired itself. He's still in a coma, but he seemed to have healed when I left Flaming."

"Thank God!" Relief flooded his face.

"Agent Boyd called," I told him.

Faint blotches touched his face but were quickly gone. "What did he have to say?"

I grinned. "That you frightened him, Tomi."

"I scared him?"

My grin broadened. "I suspect our blase policeman who has seen everything would have preferred not to have seen some of the things he's seen these past two days-" My brow arched. "A giant bear? What American Indian legend were you living when you transmorphed into that?"

Tom stared at me for a moment before he began to chuckle. "It was in her mind, Karli. She was from Washington state and must have picked up some of the old Indian legends. I just sort of went with it after I'd culled everything I could from her head."

"And this compound of whatever they were? The place in some western state?"

"That was the Aryan Nation. I took out their command post - the whole thing."

"Twenty-six people?" I demanded.

"Why not?" He shrugged. "They were unthinking bullies - sick arseholes who'd do anything to scare people into doing what they wanted." He grinned. "Besides, I only killed 24 of them - Tony shot two and Jimmy blew the leader's brains out after I got everything I could out of him."

"What're you trying to do here, Tomi?"

"I'm delivering Emil's revenge - or was." He glanced about the music room before continuing. "I guess if he's going to live, it's not exactly revenge now-"

"It's almost as if you were taking in upon yourself to rid America of its evils-"

"Maybe I am."

"Didn't we have this discussion perhaps a year ago?"

Tom gazed at me suspiciously.

I nodded. "I was going to visit the Reverend Koughlin and help him access his karmic account a bit early, if you will remember. I wanted to ensure he died and could not continue to destabilise this country.

"You took me on a long walk and explained quite convincingly why we could not become gods meting out justice. Why we could not take responsibility for human history. Do you remember that, Tomi?"

He stiffened before me and met my gaze. Defiantly. "I'm not trying to be some avenging god. That's pure bullshit!"

"Killing 26 men out in the middle of nowhere isn't revenge?"

"Those arseholes were garbage! They just needed to be put on the garbage dump."

"Then, you would change history?"

"What history?" he demanded. "Those creeps had no history. They were nothing more than mindless bullies-"

"The world has always had mindless bullies," I told him gently. "They grow old and lose their teeth - with no help from us."

"These had an organisation. They were dangerous, waiting for someone with brains to come along and use them."

I nodded, accepting his explanation as I had when I first heard of what he was doing. "Tell me what you've learned," I suggested.

He grinned quickly at me. "See it for yourself, Karli. Read my mind." He sat on the piano bench and waited for the touch of my thoughts.

I immediately discarded his memories of the Aryan Nation compound. They were gone, except for the shadows lurking beyond what had been their reality. Those, however - the telephone numbers and codes that gained access to money - were things best left to Special Agent James Boyd of America's FBI. He had the resources to search them down as well as connect them to other shadows which would never be satisfied to allow men the freedom to make their own choices.

I even ignored his play with the boy in the barracks. His pain at his belief in Emil's death justified worse. In the same situation, I might well have mounted the young bully before killing him. It would have served him right - as it had the bomber I'd given to Jody to rape before he died.

Moira Writer was interesting only for her connections to the drunken former ambassador and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. If the ambassador's memories substantiated hers, one pudgy, opinionated reactionary had moved from reaction to fascism - and would surrender his power before we were through.

I was involved. My home had been defiled. My guests had been injured and one had met a fate I would not have visited upon him if he had not been my guest. One of my lovers had nearly been killed and the other one was well on his way to visiting my revenge on those who had invaded my life without invitation. Yes, I was involved. Tom had been doing what I should have done. What I should have done when Agent Boyd called to tell me Lynda Renfroe was to visit me.

Tom MacPherson already had the dead woman's Militia contacts. There was no need for me to learn them as well. He and I would hunt together tonight.

But the imam and the Blackest Brotherhood pulled at me. They demanded my closest attention. Theirs was an organisation that was both large enough to be dangerous and one which had already established contact with the octopus of international terrorism. It was also one that had taken an interest in me and knew how to find me and mine.

I committed images and names to my memory. There were now two of us who knew enough of Mr. Shahrakhan's covert special effects unit to begin its destruction. Smiling as I pulled back from Tom's thoughts, I knew I would know much more of the Blackest Brotherhood and its terrorist connections before I was through with Mr. Shahrakhan and his religion of hate.

"The militias shall be easy for us," I told him and began to pace that my thoughts could flow in the still room. "We need only the two of us to remove these frightened little hares."

"They make bombs, Karl. Those federal buildings out west. There was a lot of talk they set off that bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta in `96. They're more like a panther than a rabbit."

I nodded my understanding of his argument. "But they are so frightened of everyone and everything - they hold their information tightly, even among themselves. Cut off the head and the body has no more sense, yes?"

"They play soldier, Karl. It might take killing two or three of them . . . You're right, though - take out their individual commanders and whoever keeps the records and they ought to be dead on their feet."

"We move against their strongest leadership tonight," I told him, accepting the command he had surrendered to me the moment he appeared in the music room. "We need take our federal policeman with us-"

"I thought you just said this would be easy?"

"It will. But I would like Mr. Boyd to be there to learn of the baby snakes we unearth while we kill the adults." I smiled mirthlessly. "His duty requires him to keep these vipers under surveillance - even if they are babies."

Tom chuckled. "The Secret Agent man who keeps the monsters in line. So, he joins us - who else?"

"No one. Not with these little boys playing soldier. I wouldn't endanger anyone else."

Johan crashed into the room, already running as he materialised. Tom stared at the Czech youth in but his briefs in surprise as the lad grabbed my arm and hid himself behind me.

Jody sauntered into the room. He wore his jeans and nothing else. And he seemed much as I visualised Mr. Carroll's strange feline doing so as he lured poor Alice deeper into that drug-induced wonderland of a century ago.

"What the fuck?" Tom demanded, glancing from the American to the Czech and back again.

"We were just horsing around in my room over in Alexandria-" Jody accepted that he was directing his explanation at me then. "Sir," he added.

I turned to Johan and asked in German: "What's going on here?"

"My Prince, we were playing on his bed-" He smiled impishly. "We pulled off a piece of clothing now and then, coming always closer to making love-"

"So?"

"He left the room for a moment and I removed my jeans and shoes. Then, he came back holding this thing-" His hands spread a meter apart. "It was in the shape of a male organ, mein Herr." He looked down at his hands. "I knew he intended to put it in me."

"And you didn't want him to?"

His eyes jerked up to meet mine. "Never anything so big, Prince Karl."

Tom's face was one large leer, but he spoke German and now knew what had happened. Jody, however, did not have the advantage of being multi-lingual.

He alternated between studied indifference, curiosity, and embarrassment as Johan told on him.

"And what do you have to say?" I asked, giving him the proverbial rope with which to hang himself.

"What did Hans tell you?" he asked, still caught between the emotions he would show us.

"Come on, kid," Tom prompted, "Where did you ever find a dildo that big?"

Jody's face became a mosaic of crimson blotches and streaks. "It's Lynda's - hers and Barbara's. I was just going to fool around with it, but Hans must have got the wrong impression of what I was planning."

"I'd say so," I offered.

"Lynda and Barbara use a dildo?" Tom asked. "I thought they were lesbians-"

"I don't think they ever really used the thing," the boy answered, still horribly blotched and looking anywhere in the room but at us. I don't even know how old the damned thing is.

"I found it one day five or six years ago-"

"You went rifling through their room?" I demanded, enjoying the humour of the situation.

"I-" He glanced at Tom, hoping for support from a countryman. "I was a little kid whose dick stayed hard, okay? I went in there hoping to find some dirty pictures. I figured they'd maybe have some of naked women, you know-?"

I could imagine a 12 or 13 year old boy who knew his mother was a lesbian and what that implied she did in bed. Ergo, she might have some pictures around that would lend an interesting edge to the boy's masturbation. "And you found this-" I glanced at Tom and he mentally supplied me with the word. "This dildo?" I finished.

"Yeah. Only, it's not exactly a dildo-" He glanced from Tom to me to Johan. "I mean, it's about three feet long with a head on both ends. It's not very thick or anything." He looked down at his feet. "I sort of thought we might try it out - you know, both of us at the same time?"

Tom's eyes danced and he struggled not to surrender to complete and helpless laughter. My struggle was only slightly less intense than his.

"You would not have put the whole thing into me?" Hans asked dubiously.

Jody fixed him with his gaze. "Shit no! You'd have got three or four inches and I'd have the same. We'd have just lain there getting off on getting fucked together."

Tom lost his struggle and laughed. I persevered. Jody again studied the parquet floor of the music room. "You surprised him with this thing," I told the American teen-ager. Such things-"

"Kinky shit," Tom managed through his laughter.

"Such kinky things are not so readily available where Johan grew up."

"Yeah," Jody answered softly without looking up. "I sort of figured that out, Sir."

"I would suggest the next time you decide to experiment, it would be advisable to discuss it before hand-" My lips twitched. "Even-" I glanced at Tom now bent over with laughter. "Even kinky sex need be enjoyable to both partners, yes?"

"You think they make them with three heads?" Tom managed, looking up at me.

I felt blood rush to my face and glared at him, at that moment cheerfully imagining how long I could prolong his death and how much I would enjoy doing so.

Tony stared at the boys behind me as he stood in the open door. A smile slowly tugged at his lips as he recovered and entered the foyer.

"Been making more honky vampires, Prince Karl?" he asked as he passed me. "And they say us nigger boys keep a hard on-" He shook his head slowly as he unzipped his parka.

I didn't have to follow his gaze to be embarrassed. Or struggle to imagine him floating face down in the Anacostia River after I'd torn his throat from him.

Of course, I had forgotten just how direct this American black man was about things sexual. It had been more than a year since I last saw him. His tuition checks were sent him through the post.

I was on the verge of suggesting he would not enjoy a swim in the river this time of the year when I realised Johan was staring at him and Tony had become aware of it.

"Ein Neger!" the Czech mumbled and continued to stare.

"Hey, man!" Tony growled as anger swept over him. "There ain't no damned honky son of a bitch gonna call this man a nigger. You gonna eat that damned word and learn some frigging manners right this fucking minute."

"Tony!" I grabbed his arm as he pushed past me. "He called you no name."

"Yeah?" He whipped back to face me, his eyes flashing. "What do you call it then?"

"He used the German word for Negro," I hurriedly offered. "He doesn't speak English all that well and he comes from the Czech Republic where there are no blacks - the Soviets didn't let them in - except at the arms factory if they wanted to start a war."

Tony didn't want to be mollified. "He's a vampire too, isn't he?" he asked, fighting his anger back under control. I nodded. "I saw what Tom did to that poor bastard out there in the woods last night-" He shivered at the memory. "Maybe he deserved to die, but that way?"

He looked down at my hand on his arm. "I'm okay now, Prince Karl." He smiled sheepishly. "You can let go. I'll behave."

"I am Johan Kys," the Czech said in English and smiled as he began to cross the foyer toward us.

Jody stayed with him. Possessively.

The door chime rang and I jerked with surprise. I had been watching the tableau playing out in my foyer rather than being alert to the arrival of our other guest.

I opened the door to Agent James Boyd of the FBI.

"Damn but it's cold out there," he groused as he entered, watching me closely.

"You're a guest in my house," I assured him.

He caught sight of the two latest vampire editions then and I was sure a smile skitted across his lips before he could re-establish his usual blank expression. "You're playing awfully young these days, aren't you, Prince?"

For the slightest moment, I allowed myself to wonder how I could rid my home of a dead FBI agent. "The blond one is Lynda Renfroe's son, the other youth is a Czech national. They're both adults."

"I'd card them if I was a DC cop," he observed and stepped around Tony and the boys and moved toward the sitting room.

We sat in the sitting room: Tom beside me on the love seat, Agent Boyd on the Queen Anne chair to our left, and Jody practically holding Johan in his lap on one side of the sofa across from us with Tony on the other side of it. Beyond us, twilight played its darkening mauves over "E" Street as the east coast of America entered the night. Tom held my hand in his.

"We hunt these Militia jackals tonight," I told my guests, my attention on the federal policeman. I smiled at him. "I suspect you would rather not have more bodies that cause more questions than you would like to answer, Jimmy Boyd?"

He chuckled. "We've had several calls from the Arlington Police about Miss Writer's demise," he admitted, glancing at Tom. "Fortunately, I'm not involved in forensic investigation, but I've heard some strange tales about what was in that apartment."

I glanced at the two young vampires and found the Czech still enthralled by Tony. I smiled at the black man. "Perhaps, you would guide Jody and Johan through gay Washington tonight?"

He stared at me. "I'm not about to have another white boy killed on me," he growled.

I nodded, remembering Marcus Eichmann as he did. "I doubt either of them will die on a dark street, Tony. I also suspect they can protect you from the monsters in the night as well."

He frowned. "What do you want me to do?"

I chuckled. "Neither of them has seen gay America up close. Perhaps you will provide them such a learning experience - and keep them from exhibiting too many of their powers?"

The blond American turned his attention from Johan's interest in Tony to me. "Wait a fucking minute here!" he growled, pushing to his feet. "We don't need a frigging baby-sitter. Besides, we came over here to hunt out these creeps with you-"

"As you shall, Jody," I assured him. "But tonight's hunt is for individuals. They are fools; yet, they are also smart as the fox. Too many of us will only frighten them."

"Yeah?"

"Tom and I hunt tonight. We take only the FBI agent."

"Why him?" Tony demanded, injecting himself into the conversation.

"We visit militiamen in their lairs. Agent Boyd needs the information we find in their minds that he can keep these American fascists in their place."

"You're travelling country roads tonight then," the black man observed and smiled.

"I become hungry, my Prince," Johan mumbled.

I chuckled. "Perhaps, Tony would show you where Emil used to hunt."

The black man stared at me suspiciously. "What are you saying, Prince Karl?" he finally asked.

"Emil had a penchant for drug dealers in Anacostia." I smiled over at my fledglings. "You could introduce Jody and Johan to fare the consumption of which has a socially redeeming nature?"

He glanced at the boys beside him on the sofa and gulped. "Do I have to watch?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Dusk was beginning to threaten the evening sky as we appeared on a hill the militia assassin had remembered. Boyd immediately scrunched deeper into his coat. "It's damned cold out here!" he growled. "Couldn't you have got us in closer?"

"Teleportation is limited to those exact places we can fix in our memory - or the memory of someone else," I told him.

"I wonder why the bastard liked this particular spot?" Tom wondered idly. "It's pretty forsaken right here. There isn't even a tree between us and that shack down there."

"That's still a hell of a walk down there," the FBI agent grumbled. "Especially through all this snow."

"With that smoke coming from his fireplace, you know he's there," I offered.

"You'll be able to build up a sweat by the time you get down the hill," Tom offered with a smile.

"Think this nut's going to buy my car breaking down and me walking up to his place?" the agent asked.

"You have your bullet-proof jacket?" I asked. He nodded and felt his chest through his coat. "Then, you only need knock on the door and convince the man there to invite you in-"

"You're going to be in my head the whole time? You're going to see what I'm seeing, knowing how I'm reading the situation?"

I nodded. "James Boyd," I told him quietly, "you are completely safe. Tom and I can be beside you in the time it takes this man to have a thought and act upon it."

Tom and I watched the agent begin to make his way down the hill to the shack. "Why would anyone want to live this far from any civilisation?" Tom asked. "This upper peninsula of Michigan is about the most desolated place I can imagine."

"If you are afraid of every shadow, then you make yourself a hermit." I frowned. "I suspect these paranoid children also feel they can play soldier in this desolation without being observed by the authority they've convinced themselves is after them."

"So, they come out here to play war?" he asked as Agent Boyd made his way through nearly meter-high snow.

"That and plan wanton destruction. They've bombed several federal buildings and-" I frowned again. "I understand they're suspected of that bombing at the Olympics two years ago. They're not pleasant people."

"They're just bullies like the others." Tom nodded deeper understanding than his few words had carried. "It's not just revenge for you then, is it, Karli?"

I shook my head. "No." I studied his face and smiled. "I think it would have been if it had been me instead of you coming here when you did. But it would have deeper underpinnings than just anger at what this excrement did to Emil. Remember how I wanted to destroy that preacher last year and you stopped me?"

He nodded. "I knew the Christian Centre had been destroyed. Those computer records did that to them. But the evil Koughlin had brought to life - it hadn't been destroyed. It was like the French hate after the Prussian occupation of Paris or the German and Austrian hate after the great war. It hadn't been rooted out of his followers as those hadn't. If we had used those records to hunt the Gruppenfuhreren of his organisations, these little gauleiters wouldn't have risen up to bite at America again - and at us."

I turned to study the shack below us and watched as Boyd stepped onto its porch to knock at the door.

The man who opened the door was dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. He quickly invited Boyd inside, more I suspected because he was cold than he had accepted the FBI agent's story. It did not matter. A mortal stood inside the house, inviting us to enter.

"Join with me," I told Tom and keyed my thoughts on the space beside Boyd. I felt Tom's thoughts link with mine and projected us there.

"What the-?" the burly man I now noticed was losing much of his hair groaned when we materialised and stared at us in shock.

"Are you alone?" I asked quietly. It was he who had sinned against the commonweal, not a spouse or children. I would not have others pay the price for his stupidity he would pay.

"Yeah." His anger flared then. "You - all of you - get the fuck out of my house or I'll-"

Tom didn't permit him to finish. He was already pushing himself roughly into the man's mind. The militiaman stared at me and screamed. And grabbed his head. Boyd unobtrusively seated himself across the room, away from he knew was coming.

I joined him, leaving my American lover and the militiaman near the door - and gave him the information Tom was pulling from the man's thoughts as it entered my mind and was dumped there.

"There is a group of them - this man, brothers in Georgia, someone in Montana - they control something they called a - the Confederated Militias. This one ordered that federal building in Texas bombed in 1995. The men in Georgia were instrumental in the Olympic bombing as well as the one at some family planning clinic last year in Atlanta-"

Boyd pulled out a note pad and began to make notes as the militiaman collapsed to the floor and mewed his pain as Tom continued to rape his mind.

The flow of information faltered and became a trickle. "Do you need more?" I asked the federal agent.

"We're going to be in Georgia and Montana?" he asked. I nodded.

He paled. "Get his top aides," he commanded in a whisper and Tom obliged him. He called out names from across the room as he pulled them from the man's memory.

"You have everything?" I asked. He nodded and stared fixedly at the fireplace. The militiaman moaned as Tom stepped to him and pulled him to himself. I felt his fear as Tom's face lowered itself below his jaw and he felt the prick of the vampire's fangs. Boyd stared consciously at the fireplace as the man's throat was torn audibly from him in the small room.

"We'll share the brothers in Georgia," Tom said as he came to stand beside me and smiled.

"You can do that again so soon?" Boyd asked hesitantly.

Tom grinned. "Killing makes me hungry."

Johan felt Jody's anger seethe into the open between them as they let themselves through the gate - a hot, arid wind whipping itself toward gale force. |What's wrong?| he queried mentally.

|Some fucking lover you're turning out to be!| the American growled, the wind of his anger speeding with his thoughts to engulf the Czech. |Why don't you just drop your jeans and tell the black bastard to start fucking you right here for everybody to watch?|

"Jody-?" Tears misted in Czech's eyes as the man's suspicions crashed through him. "Ich will das nicht!"

"What-?" Jody stared at him, sensing the blood rinsing over his eyeballs before he saw it. "You're bleeding!" he mumbled fearfully as he hurriedly moved to Johan's side, his anger and suspicion forgotten for the moment.

"I - where?"

"Your eyes. I smell the blood, Hans."

The Czech chuckled as he wiped his eyes. |I almost was crying, Liebchen-|

|Crying? With blood?|

Johan smiled and nodded. |It would appear so. You made my heart bleed with your doubt-|

|You want him, though - don't you?|

|I want only you that way, Liebchen.|

|You've sure acted like you were in heat all night-|

|In heat?|

|Like a bitch dog needing a fuck.|

Johan's eyes grew large with his surprise as he met the American's gaze. |You would think such things after this week? How can you?| he asked finally. |I love you.|

|You've been drooling every time you looked at him - and you couldn't take your eyes off him.|

|No! Never!|

|You sure could have fooled me, Hans.|

|I - He interests me, Jody - that is all. He is the first Negro I've ever seen.|

|They're supposed to have big dicks, you know.|

Johan stared at him for long moments before he laughed. |You're big enough for me, Liebchen,| he managed.

|You really don't want to try him out?|

|I hadn't thought about it. Perhaps with you - if you're interested in investigating what size does to a libido.| He grinned and put his arm around Jody's chest.

|You mean it? You haven't once wonder what he had in his pants?|

|Read my mind, Liebchen. Know the truth before you jump on your horse.|

|I believe you.| They began to walk toward Tony waiting at the corner for them. |I guess I'm going to have to start trusting you for this to work between us-|

|It makes it much easier, I think.|

Tony had left the two boys at the gate and moved on to the intersection. He had felt the American kid's suspicion even back in the house. And it was fast becoming hostility as the three of them entered the night. When the two of them stopped at the gate, he'd kept walking and hoped whatever the matter was would be settled before they caught up to him. He sure as shit didn't need two frigging vampires pissed off at him. He had a damned good idea he wouldn't see tomorrow's sun if that happened.

He also suspected he knew what was behind Jody's anger. The other boy, Hans, hadn't been able to take his eyes off him all evening. Under normal circumstances, Tony wouldn't mind a roll in the hay with the foreign kid. He sure wasn't bad on the eyes.

But the American clearly had dibs on him. The blond kid was also a frigging vampire. And he'd seen what those guys could do to a man more than once. Tony liked his neck just the way it was. He liked the feel of his heart pumping his blood. He didn't want it to stop doing that any time soon. Not as the price of a quick fuck with a cute white boy with a cute accent, he sure didn't.

He smiled tentatively when the boys started toward him with their arms thrown over each other's shoulders. Whatever it was that had the American kid riled up, it seemed to be over now.

"So, where are you taking us, Tony?" Jody asked as they came even with him.

"There's a C&W bar in the next block."

"C and W?" Johan asked.

"Country and Western music," Jody offered.

"And lilly white," Tony added.

"You can enter this place?" the Czech asked.

"Why the fuck shouldn't I?"

"They will not make you leave?"

Jody smiled. "Those bad old days are long gone, lover. Tony - any black man - can go into any bar he wants to."

"This is so?" the Czech asked the black man with them and smiled when Tony nodded. "Then let's go there."

I smiled at the FBI agent in the growing darkness. "It's not so cold here, my friend," I told him.

His nose wrinkled in disgust as he looked about us. "Yeah, it may be warmer down here in Georgia, but I'd still like to have the open land we had back in Michigan."

"It sounds like our special agent man's just never satisfied, doesn't it?" Tom mused, jibing Agent Boyd. He glanced up the two-laned macadamised lane and pointed. "That must be the drive into this bunch of crazies."

Boyd squinted in the direction Tom had pointed. "All I can see is a solid expanse of black-" He glanced back up the lane before returning his gaze to where Tom had indicated a road. "Who'd ever thought they planted pine trees so close together?"

"Come on," Tom said. "Let's go pay the Southern gothic brothers our little call and get them out of the way. It'll only be the guy in Montana after them."

We walked the 20 meters of pavement and turned onto the hard clay drive that led deep into the dark woods. "One of you two guys do the honours this time," Boyd suggested as we left the paved road behind.

"Why not you?" I asked.

"I'm not real happy at the thought of getting my head blown off - and this one feels like there's going to be violence."

"It's all right for us to be shot?" Tom asked, moving closer to the agent. I smiled as Boyd shied away from him.

"I hear you guys aren't quite as likely to bite a bullet as one of us mortals are," he answered.

"I'll do it," Tom told us before I could speak up. He grinned at Boyd. "I guess somebody's got to show government agents how to have guts." He glanced at me and mumbled: "Stay with me?"

Boyd and I stayed among the trees as Tom trudged across the 50 meters of clearing to the two-storey log cabin, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He looked a youth disgusted with the fickle fate that had brought him here.

He was on the step and was stepping onto the porch when the door to the cabin opened and a burly, bearded man stared out at him. "What're you doing here, boy?" he demanded.

Through Tom's eyes, I saw another man within the room as large as the first one and he held a shotgun.

"My car broke down out on the highway. Your drive was the first one I came to."

"Out here?" the second man asked suspiciously. Tom nodded.

"You ain't from around these parts," the first man mused. "Where you heading?"

"Columbus," Tom answered quickly. "That highway out there looked to be a short cut on the map."

"That'll teach you to believe government maps, boy," the second man offered from inside, the suspicion in his voice gone as he accepted Tom's explanation. "You may as well come on in."

"Yeah," the first man agreed, stepping back. "We'll call somebody we know from the garage in town."

I waited until Tom passed over the threshold and stood in the room. "Give us a minute and start for the house," I told Boyd and followed Tom's image of the room to him.

The first man spotted me as I materialised in the central room of the cabin. "What the fuck!" he growled and grabbed Tom around the chest, pulling him against him. The second man turned to see me.

"Who the fuck are you?" he demanded and lowered the shotgun that its barrel was pointed at me.

I fixed my attention on the space immediately beside the man and projected myself there. I smiled into his startled face as my hand gripped the barrel of the shotgun and said: "I'm the man you and your associates have been trying to kill. I thought I'd return the favour."

He stepped back, attempting to turn the gun on me, but I twisted it in his hand, catching his finger within the trigger guard. It went off before I could take it from him, its pellets peppering the wooden ceiling above us.

Sit! I commanded and took the shotgun from his fingers. He stared at me in surprise as his body obeyed me.

Tom's man started at me over my American lover's shoulder. "I don't know who you are, but you better get your ass off this property now," he growled at me.

"Why would I wish to do that?"

"I got this boy and I'm going to start crushing the life out of him if you ain't heading for the door by the time I count to five."

I chuckled as Tom simply dematerialised from within his arms and reappeared a meter in front of him. "That's going to be hard to do," he said to the startled man.

Boyd pushed open the door and entered the room then, nodding to Tom and myself. "Let's do what we are here to do," I told them and looked at Tom. "Will you mind each of us taking one of these-" My nose wrinkled in disgust as my gaze went to the bearded man between Tom and Boyd, "these men?"

He grinned. "You want the one you already have sitting over there?"

I shrugged and Tom turned to the man who had opened the door for him. And slammed into the man's thoughts. I watched the burly Georgian's face knit into pain before he screamed and knew Tom was already deep and trowelling.

I turned to the man sitting docilely for me. "It would seem he's much rougher than I try to be-"

"What's he doing to my brother?"

"Reading his thoughts." I glanced over my shoulder at the two of them. "Plundering through his memories." I smiled at him. "As I will yours."

"Why?" The man's startlement was finally becoming fear and it showed in his face. But he managed to hold it at bay, demanding to know the reason for our appearance. I suspected this was the smarter of the two brothers.

The brother behind me had fallen to the floor and folded himself into a foetal position as Tom plundered his mind at will. He whimpered and groaned as an animal in pain.

"You and your organisation would harm others. You were part of an attempted assassination on me. You are dangerous and we would know your confederates." I gave him the explanation as I eased in under the ineffective defences he was setting to protect his mind from the rape Tom was painfully exacting from his brother.

We sat in the sitting room of my house in Washington as the clock on the mantel read midnight. "Do you have enough information to keep your American monsters under control?" I asked Agent Boyd.

He forced a smile to his lips. "I still have to write it up and delete the two of you from everything-"

"Delete us?" Tom asked.

He chuckled. "It's official US policy that there are no such things as vampires, guys. It'd look pretty damned funny if either of you were found among the notes of what's happened the past several nights with these freaks. Burnt corpses don't show fang marks or torn throats - and my notes aren't about to mention them."

"There are organisations that were involved in this - from outside of the country-"

Boyd shook his head. "Sorry, Prince Karl, I can't help you there. It's been official government policy since Jimmy Carter was President that we don't go after terrorist organisations outside of the US. Our sole source of information are other police organisations-"

"This applies to the CIA as well?" Tom demanded quickly.

"The whole US government - us, the CIA, the military intelligence boys. We're dead in the water."

"How do you get the info you do get?" Tom continued. "You seemed to have that nutty sheikh in New York nailed fast-"

"The Limeys don't have as many controls put on them as we Americans do. Their security agencies are under orders to protect the population over there."

"Can you provide names and addresses, Agent Boyd?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah. We've got some of them and I can always ask the boys in London to get more."

"I will want photographs of the men and where they live."

"Hey!" He stared at me. "Some of those Arab governments protect these guys. You can have their police crawling all over the place."

"Do you really think that'd make any difference at all?" Tom asked.

The Barn faced Pennsylvania Avenue and was less than half a block from the Eastern Market exit of the Metro underground. It was exactly as Tony had described it: a lily white, country and western bar - and gay. Its few clientele at this early hour, however, were far from redneck.

The barkeep greeted them as dear friends and spritzed Coca-Cola for all three of them before they could order. He chuckled at Johan's surprise when he found only soda in his glass. "This is America, baby," he offered. "At eighteen, you can vote, you can sleep with whoever you want to, you can get your ass killed in a war, or even get electrocuted if you screw up big time - but you can't drink any kind of alcohol until you're 21."

He only understood a part of what the man was saying to him but nodded anyway. He touched the barkeep's thoughts. And nearly blushed at the lust he found there. "We find a table, yes?" he asked his companions quickly.

"You okay?" Tony asked Johan as he led the white boys to a nearby table.

The Czech looked from one to the other. "I would understand Americans," he said finally. "Jody, when you see a good-looking youth, do you undress him in your mind and mount his ass?"

The American's face threatened to blotch brightly. "What the shit is that supposed to mean?"

"I would know if you think this way about a man you haven't met."

"Jesus! I - when we first got to Germany, I thought Tom and Emil were really good-looking guys. But I didn't strip them in my head-"

Johan frowned. "You still didn't know you were gay as you hadn't met me. Since then, have you?"

"I haven't had much of a chance, Hans," he grumbled. "This is the first time I've been out and about since-"

Johan's frown deepened and he turned to face Tony. "And you?"

"You guys read minds, don't you?" the black said to both of them, knowing the answer already and guessing what had brought on the cute Czech's question. "Who's got the hots for you?"

Johan's face froze. "You know what happened?" he asked suspiciously.

"I'm guessing - was it the bartender?"

The Czech shuddered and nodded jerkingly.

"You're both going to have to accept that everybody handles attraction differently," he told them. "Some guys look at somebody and like the body, the face, the ass - whatever. Other guys really go whole hog fantasising-" He saw Jody glance over his shoulder at the barkeep and hurried on.

"That doesn't mean a damned thing, though. You can't go tearing some poor bastard's throat out just because he likes the way your ass looks and imagines how much fun it'd be to fuck it."

"When does it mean something then?" Jody growled.

"When a guy starts putting the make on the guy he wants."

"Shit! You put the make on girls."

"On boys too - if that's where your head's at. From what I learned from Prince Karl and the others, you vampires aren't into mind-control of us humans. You're going to have to let us think whatever we want to think." He tried to smile. "It's only when some guy starts going past thinking it that you can start doing your vampire thing. You read, Blondie?"

"Yeah," Jody mumbled. "But I don't have to like it."

Tony realised he had grown tense during the discussion and chuckled. "Okay, Blondie, there's maybe ten men in here besides us. Touch their thoughts. Go ahead, do it."

Faint streaks of red ran across Jody's face to find their way into dark blotches. "Jesus! They all think we - you - the three of us are getting it on," he mumbled. "They all wonder just how big you are to get us two white kids hooked - and that's got two or three of them drooling."

Tony forced himself to laugh. "Now, you know how it feels to be a black man in a white gay bar. Everybody starts thinking about your dick."

"But why do they assume we have sex?" Johan asked and Tony saw he was serious.

"Didn't you know? That's all we black boys are good for - big dicks. And gay men are size queens. So, us niggers are good for a roll in the hay - but that's all we're good for!" He hadn't meant to permit his bitterness to show but it was now lying on the table between their Cokes for these two white kids to see up close.

"You aren't big where it counts?" Jody asked before he could realise he was stepping into the middle of what bothered the black man.

"That sure don't matter!" Tony hissed. "You ain't dropping your shorts and turning your ass up to find out."

Jody blinked. He reached across the table and laid his hand on the other man's arm. "I didn't mean it that way!"

"But you did," Tony growled and jerked his arm from Jody's touch. "You've been taught from day one blacks only have sex on their minds and that we've got the equipment that keeps it there. We become some sort of sex machine in the minds of every white man around. And, for most of them, that's all we've got going for us."

"And you do not like this-" Johan frowned as he searched for the right word. "This perception?"

"Would you? Shit! I'm a month away from graduating from a computer programming school the Prince sent me to. I grew up in Anacostia - there's more than 50% unemployment down there. A high school diploma don't mean shit. But I'm going to get out of there and stay away from there because of my brains - not my dick."

"Tony, I'm really sorry I said what I said," Jody told him. "Maybe I grew up with that shit going around but I don't have to believe it. And it sure as hell doesn't have to determine what colour my friends are."

Tony skidded his stool back from the table. "Let's go someplace I can forget I'm black," he told them as he stood. His face ticked. "I don't mean it that way. I'm not ashamed of what colour I am; but this shit about my dick size in connection with that colour burns me up."

|Why are Americans like these men in here?| the Czech asked Jody as they both stood.

|Hey! We don't all go around with sex on the brain. And it isn't just Americans either - remember being pissed that you couldn't go to an acting school because you're an ethnic German?|

|But the Czechs didn't treat Germans as if they were brainless or their organ was only for one continuous orgy.|

Outside, Tony turned to them and shrugged. "I'm sorry, guys. I get hung up on some crazy shit now and then."

"But those men in there were seeing you in a way you did not want to be seen," Johan told him. "It is right we leave."

"Yeah? Well, I wasn't the only one they were seeing that way." He glanced at Jody. "Seems I remember you saying they were imagining what it'd be like to take you two as well. And what started the whole thing was Hans here seeing how that bartender wanted to pork him."

"As you said, we can't be into mind-control," Johan answered, "so I ignored his desire for me."

"Yeah, but there are times when that sure would feel nice." He glanced from Jody to Johan and back. "So, where would you two like to go next."

"Perhaps we should return to the Prince's house," the Czech offered and grinned. "Jody and I will not be restricted to soda there."

"And you won't have to wonder who's thinking about how big you are," Jody added with a laugh as he started to walk toward Sixth Street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A meter from the curb, a brick wall rose abruptly a storey above the street to become a front patio to the two-storey Georgian which stood above Georgetown. Lavender still streaked the darkened sky and people huddled within their overcoats in their rush home in the sudden appearance of winter in the American Capital.

"This bitch lives here?" the blond boy asked me, gazing up at the house above us with awe.

"That's what Tom found when he interrogated the errand girl," I told Jody. "The federal agent collaborated his information."

Johan's stomach growled softly. "We didn't eat last night," he mumbled apologetically.

"What did you do?"

"We sat and talked with Tony," Jody offered immediately. "He's really an interesting guy."

"And he has a sense of humour," Johan added.

"You both feed tonight," I told them as I gazed at Jody Renfroe. "Your mother would be angry with me if I did not keep her only child well-fed," I told him and did not try to hide my smile.

He studied me for a moment before allowing himself an answering grin. "I'm beginning to catch on to your jokes, Prince Karl - only, it's sort of hard because you've got the driest sense of humour I've ever seen."

"I appreciate a good joke," I allowed and forced my attention back to the house rising above us. "You must get yourself invited inside, Jody. If you can't, none of us can get to this Paula Gulag-"

"I don't understand that part. It doesn't make a lick of sense that a vampire can't get to this old hag - not with all we can do."

I chuckled. "Agreed. But, still, it is our reality. Any house - any private shelter occupied by a mortal - simply is unavailable without that mortal's invitation to us."

The American gazed at me dubiously. "I believe you, understand - but I'm going to have to try this out sometime. It just doesn't make sense."

"Do try it. But, at this house, you need convince her servant to invite you inside. That's the only way you may enter - and the only way Johan and I can join you."

The boy grinned. "I've got to make him want me, huh?"

"If that's your appraisal of him - and if that's what it takes."

"You think this guy's some troll drooling for hot boydick?"

I blinked. I knew there were a few very specific ways of saying things best left unsaid between men or vampires not caught up in a moment of passion. At least there were for the troll I assumed this boy saw me being. I coughed.

"When you are inside, Johan and I shall join you. You two take the servant - he is yours."

"We feed early tonight, yes?" the Czech asked happily.

I nodded.

"What're we waiting for?" the American grumbled and started for the steps leading up to the house and its patio.

I watched Jody Renfroe bound up the brick steps and established a link to his mind that I could see and hear what he saw and heard. I was not about to allow the child put himself into danger without me beside him to protect him.

Jody's mind was blank as he lifted the ornamental knocker on the solid oak door of the house. A keen thrill of adventure, dread of rejection, simple curiosity, and even irritation at waiting for his adventure to begin all washed through him as he waited for someone to answer the door. But his mind held no coherent thought at that moment.

The lack surprised me. I would be sorting through plans to beguile my way inside. Multiple plans for multiple contingencies. He was obviously content to go with the flow of events. Unglaublich.

A muscular man opened the door and stood solidly in the entrance studying the boy before him. I remembered him from the soiree my Embassy held to introduce me to the power elite of reaction two years ago when Pat Koughlin was the growing threat across America's horizon. A bland man. A physically powerful man. A man completely devoted to his mistress. Paula Gulag's male poodle.

"Daddy!" Jody shouted loud enough to be heard to the end of the block and sprang at the man, grabbing him about the chest and burying his face in his shirt.

I fell back between two cars at the kerb in shock. Daddy? From what strange recess of the boy's mind had that thought risen?

Apparently I was not the only one nearly incapacitated by the American boy's approach to gaining entry into the Gulag sanctum. The servant reeled backward into the foyer of the house. But he had his hands about Jody. Unaware he did so, he carried a vampire over the threshold of his mistress' house.

A most demonstrative invitation. So very American. Unmoglich!

"Is Jody all right, my Prince?" Johan asked quietly as his hand grasped my elbow to steady me.

"Jody?" the servant's questioning voice sounded in my ears at the same moment it did those of our American Trojan horse.

"He is well-" I forced myself to chuckle. "But I suspect you may have to put off feeding a bit-" I raised a brow as I fixed him with my gaze. "It would appear he has found his long lost father."

"What?" the Czech gasped, staring at me in disbelief.

"A moment, please," I told him and extended my thoughts to Jody Renfroe's.

|Do we still join you?| I queried. |Or do we change our plans?|

Hate and anger fizzed about me, an electric current open and exposed - and dangerous to any who touched it. |The fucking bastard abandoned me and Lynda like stray kittens. He dies tonight!|

Oh.

I turned to Johan. "I believe your communal feeding with Jody is still on, after all," I offered. "Link your thoughts with mine and we'll join him inside."

The burly nondescript servant glared as he turned to see Johan and myself at the foot of the stairs. He turned to Jody, his nostril curling in disgust. "I don't how you did it but you brought these bums here," he snarled. "You're just like your frigging ma - a brainless cunt." He turned back to face me, ignoring the two boys.

"Get the fuck out of here now, mister - and take these two brats with you."

"They're of legal age," I chirped, allowing myself the pleasure of playing with garbage. "They don't have to obey me."

"You got to the count of five." He smiled menacingly. "If any of you are still here after that, there's not going to be anything left for the cops to book when they get here."

Was this man actually threatening me? And the young lads who were my companions as well? I sincerely hoped not. His death would be so much more unpleasantly messy that way.

His hand shot toward my face. I watched his fist come toward me and didn't remember hearing him count to five. I imagined what his fist would do my face if I permitted it to hit me. I'd never held myself back before as I was doing and realised just how abysmally slow mortals were.

I reached out and snared his wrist when it was still 25 centimetres from my face. And smiled. "Ich denke nicht," I mumbled and shoved my other hand into his abdomen.

And watched him expel every millilitre of air he had in his lungs.

The shock growing slowly across his face was enough to make me laugh as I lifted him in the foyer of the Gulag Georgetown home. He had not yet realised he held no air in his lungs as I threw him down the hall toward the large open room beyond us.

He screamed as he sailed through the air. But, as a cat will, he twisted his body to prepare for the landing before him. He passed through the double pull-back doors guarding the room and stuck out his hands to break his fall.

He crashed into a glass coffee table, destroying it. But the soft loveseat beyond broke his fall even more than he could have hoped. He raggedly sucked air into his lungs and pushed himself to his feet as we follow him deeper into the house.

He spread his legs and lowered himself slightly to put his weight on his knees and watched the three of us enter the large room. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol. And grinned at me.

"I don't know what the fuck you are, buddy; but you're about to be dead," he growled and pulled the trigger.

The bullet entered me no more than a centimetre of the left wall of my heart. In that moment, I heard bone shatter before its impact and I suspect I leaned to the right.

Even if the bullet had hit my heart, he would not have killed me. But he would have incapacitated me for several moments. I had no idea how Jody and Johan would have reacted during those moments. Confusion would have played into his hands, even without killing me.

But he did not have the luxury of our confusion. My body was already repairing itself before the bullet passed through the back of my shirt. And I continued to approach him.

I smiled as I reached him. My hand grasped his holding the pistol and crushed it. He stared speechless at his destroyed hand even as I released it and he dropped the pistol. Only slowly, did his face begin to show the pain that grew to hold him. He showed his pain but did not verbalise it.

"Do you want him exclusively?" I asked Jody. "Or can the two of you share him?"

Jody glanced at Johan questioningly. "We've got to keep his heart beating," he admonished his feeding companion.

"Do you want to tear his throat out then, Liebchen?" the Czech asked quietly and smiled at the American.

"What the fuck are you two brats running on about?" the man demanded, holding his hand and glancing from one to the other of them.

|Watch Daddy dearest shit his pants,| Jody told Johan and grinned. His forehead receded and his nose and jaw grew into a snout. His face sprouted hair as his shirt fell from him. He was still grinning as his chest narrowed and elongated.

The man forgot his crushed hand as he watched the boy change slowly into wolf form. His eyes grew wide and he sucked air into a mouth that gaped open.

"My goodness! What do we have here?" The cultured, female voice invaded the room from the open doorway and pulled each of us to it. The American boy's shape-changing halted as his jeans and briefs fell from narrowed hips.

Paula Gulag entered the room, her eyes on Jody Renfroe. She circled him, studying his half-human, half-wolf form. "I suspect you're much more handsome as a man than you are as a dog," she told him finally.

Dismissing him, she glanced at Johan, studied him for a moment, and nodded. "Very nice," she mumbled and turned to face me.

|My Prince, what would you have us do?| the Czech queried.

|I think Jody should return to human form and dress - unless he wishes the lady to inspect his privates.|

|And the servant, my Prince?|

|He is yours to do as you wish.|

"You intend to kill us?" she asked quietly. I nodded and she smiled mirthlessly. Behind her, a now human and fully dressed Jody stepped up to his father and pushed him down onto the loveseat. Johan moved beside him.

The man stared into his son's eyes as the Czech leaned into him. He jerked instinctively as Johan's lips touched his neck. He shut his eyes as he felt fangs press into his flesh. Jody knelt before his father, his lips finding the other side of his neck.

Ambassador Gulag gave her attention to me, consciously ignoring the death of her servant behind her. "I see you managed to survive our best laid plans, Prince von Muribor," she said in passable German and seated herself beside the telephone.

"It's rather more difficult to kill me than your assassins though," I agreed, remaining as formal as she and hiding in an accent most Americans though was English.

Behind her, the boys fed and I sensed the arrival of death for this woman's servant. I marvelled at his ready surrender; he had not made a sound since the arrival of his mistress among us. I marvelled even more at her success in ignoring the man's death.

"I should have understood how you continued to live despite Congressman Broussard's best efforts, my Prince. The trail of dead bodies were a dead give away-" she smiled at her verbal play.

"I think you would need believe in a vampiric influence," I allowed. "In this age, the possibility we exist tends to be ignored, regardless of the facts supporting it."

"So true. I watched Koughlin's house of cards collapse and never once thought of a supernatural agent behind it."

"Why did you order me killed?" I asked, giving vent to curiosity. "I was far away. In Germany, I was hardly a force you were likely to encounter as you set out to re-establish an organisation with which to destroy America. It was your un-doing."

She chuckled. "If hindsight were foresight, we would never make mistakes, my Prince. You were the single most destructive obstacle to Pat Koughlin's rise to power. I saw removing you from the outset allowed us to put back together what he'd built. With you out of the way, we would be able to coast much further as we rebuilt his organisation."

She inclined her head over her shoulder, but I noticed she did not allow herself to see any of the scene behind her. "Have they killed poor Renfroe yet?"

"I think he's dead, madam Ambassador."

"He was really quite good at keeping me organised-" she grinned. "He kept me sober when I needed to be."

"He died a gentleman, ma'am," I assured her and meant it. The man had surrendered without so much as a whimper to his son and Johan the moment he understood he could no longer protect his mistress. A perfect servant to the end, choosing death to insult.

"I think I would very much like a drink, my Prince."

"And I would have your thoughts as sober as possible, Madam Ambassador."

She stared at me in surprise. "You're going to interrogate me!"

"I would know my enemies."

"Did you bring sodium penithol to make me tell my every little secret?"

I smiled. "The truth serum leaves a strong and unpleasant aftertaste, ma'am. It's much easier to read a person's thoughts-"

"Ahh - another of those vampire traits that've been forgotten in this modern age." She smiled at me. "One drink won't leave my thoughts so incapacitated you can't read them, my Prince. I think I need a very tall Scotch and soda before you begin on me - one with very little soda."

I poured Scotch into the tallest glass the servant Renfroe had left in the room and spritzed very little soda into it. As I handed her the glass of liquor, I touched her thoughts and found I could slip easily beneath the surface resistance she had been able to put up against me.

Her eyes widened as she felt me begin to shift through her thoughts. She shut them in resignation and brought the glass to her lips.

I am not a vindictive creature.

Nor I was as I sorted through Ambassador Paula Gulag's memories and plans as she sat quietly beside her phone. She offered no resistance to my presence and I did not cause her pain. She knew she would die for her beliefs. She was calm with that knowledge.

She was also remarkably organised with related items placed under memory jogging keywords.

I found her connections to the preacher who had come far too close to destroying American democracy under his name. She understood he had feted her with his warmth to win her allegiance and make her his one claim to knowledge of the world beyond the darkness at the core of the American soul to which he had sought to appeal. She had allowed him to use her in his quest for power.

In turn, she used that allegiance to rebuild some of the many bridges Koughlin had to fascist elements in America. She consciously gave pride back to the bullies who would strut their anger and grind intelligence under their heels.

Paula Gulag guessed she could never be the new Fuhrer of the new order she would build; she was satisfied to wield power from behind the throne she sought to build. Her nominee as the future leader was Luke Renfroe and she assiduously cultivated the Speaker of the House of Representatives. She felt she had succeeded in tying the voice of reaction to her.

The evidence of Renfroe's conversion was convincing enough I knew I would act to remove him from power. I doubted her evidence would satisfy an American court of law, but I was not a jury fettered by the fine points of English common law as interpreted by more than two hundred years in America.

I was simply one vampire grown ill of men trying to kill him and his. The honourable gentleman would not like whatever I decided to do to him.

The Ambassador drained her glass when I had left her thoughts and glanced about the room. "That wasn't so bad," she mumbled and turned to face me.

She forced a smile to her lips. "Would it be presumptuous of me to ask you to let me live?"

"It would," I allowed. I felt mild regret. This woman had a sense of aristocracy I had not seen since before my native Austria became Hitler's Ostmark. She also had a will of iron. Alive, she would always provide an intellectual underpinning to fascism.

"Let's get it over with then," she mumbled and, closing her eyes, rested the back of her head against the wall to expose her neck.

I had ordered the boys back to the house on "E" Street before I struck the match. The inferno I knew would arise in Georgetown was one no vampire needed to be near - especially two children of whose instincts I was unsure. I stood at the open French doors and visualised my bedroom in my own house before I lighted the match. As fire spread immediately through the room, I placed myself inside that visualisation and dematerialised before I could feel heat lap at my hands.

I descended the stairs under a cloud of lingering shame. Paula Gulag's house in Georgetown was a veritable museum. Much beauty was being destroyed because I could not allow two corpses to be found in pools of their own blood with fang marks on their throats. Both the mistress and her servant had had their throats torn out, but that alone had not been enough to secret what I was. They had to be burned beyond recognition as did the place of their death. To protect myself from the science of forensics, I was destroying art treasures which were priceless. Unglaublich

The telephone began to ring as I stepped onto the foyer. I entered my study and picked the instrument up.

"My Prince?" Valentin asked and Paula Gulag's art treasures were forgotten.

"Yes?" I saw Emil dying in Flaming without me there with him. I sank into the chair behind my desk.

"Herr Emil would speak with you and Herr Thomas, my Prince - a minute please."

My heart again began to beat. My vision was blurred.

"Karl!" Tom's voice full of suspicion as he studied me assailed me from the door opened onto the foyer. "What is it?"

"Emil-" I managed.

"Oh, God!" He was beside the desk immediately reaching for the telephone before he could stop himself. "He isn't dead, is he?" he asked hesitantly. I saw the two teen-agers standing in the door watching us.

"He's awake, Tomi," I mumbled and handed him the instrument. Trembling, I wiped my eyes to clear them. "He's awake!" I shouted as happiness crashed over me.

Tom thought to switch the line to its speaker connection so we both could speak with the lover we had nearly lost.

"Well," Emil's voice said, "I know where I stand with you two."

"Where is that?" I asked, falling into the trap the American idiom held for someone such as me who did not always understand the nuances.

"Well-" He drew it out. "The moment you think I'm dead, you both run off to America to frolic-"

"Scheiß!" I groaned as Tom chuckled.

The doorbell rang and Johan pulled the doors to the study closed as Jody went to answer it.

"Agent Boyd!" the American mumbled as he recognised the FBI agent.

"Where's the Prince?" the man demanded, stepping inside.

"He and Tom are on the phone - with Germany." Jody grinned. "Come on into the sitting room and I'll see what Prince Karl has for me to offer you to drink."

"Where have you guys been?" Boyd demanded as he followed the boys into the room opposite the study.

"Tom's been here all evening-"

"How about you - and the Prince?" The agent sat himself on the couch and gazed back at the boys.

"We were out."

"Maybe in Georgetown? Maybe visiting Paula Gulag?"

"We were-" Jody halted then and grinned. "Why don't you ask the Prince? I'm sure he has a lot to tell you." He glanced at the bar. "What would you like to drink?"

"Jesus, kid. Hell is breaking all over with that old bag getting herself murdered. What do you mean - he's got a lot to tell me?"

Johan poured three shot glasses of schnapps and joined the other two men. "This stuff does nasty things to my head, Hans," the American grumbled.

"We need it. Down it!" He lifted his own glass and drained it. Jody followed after him and immediately began to cough. Hans smiled at the agent. "You too, Polizei. Down it!"

He watched the agent raise the glass to his lips and take the alcohol into his mouth. "We killed the old woman and her servant," he allowed as Boyd swallowed the schnapps and grinned broadly as the man choked, some of the liquor going down the wrong way.

"Are you trying to kill him?" Jody asked as he wiped tears from his eyes. Agent Boyd continued to cough. "Mortals still have to use their lungs, Hans . . . Shit!" He circled behind the sofa and struck the man on the back with his open palm. He grinned back at Johan.

His eyes watering, Agent Boyd managed to get out: "I'd better wait for the Prince, guys."

"You are sure?" Johan asked, allowing his voice to show surprise. "The police do not want to know how we killed these people?"

Boyd shut his eyes and shook his head slowly.

I entered the room with Tom.

"You didn't take me along with you!" Boyd growled in greeting.

I gazed at the federal policeman for several moments, taking the time to force my joy deeper inside my mind that I might confront whatever the American government demanded of me.

"We'd already cleaned out the cesspool," Tom told him as I established my defences. "Wiping out the clog that mucked it in the first place didn't require you being there."

"What about what she knew?" the man snarled. It was the first time I'd seen him angry in more than a year of association. I was surprised. "What's the matter, Agent Boyd?" I managed to ask.

He frowned. "You'd knocked a hole in the fascist movement so big the US Navy could send an aircraft carrier through it." His eyes met mine. "We couldn't have done half of the shit you've done this past year - first with Koughlin and now with Gulag." His voice became nearly plaintive. "I've got almost twenty years with the Bureau. I thought I'd managed to do a pretty good job of keeping these worms under their rocks - until you pulled Koughlin out into the light so everybody could see him."

I understood. Without touching his mind. Destroying the fascist threat to his country was what Jim Boyd had devoted his life to. Koughlin's destruction was the crowning achievement to that life, even though he had been but peripheral to that destruction. These assassins of Paula Gulag were the mop-up operation he accepted as a collateral to that achievement.

He could justify our destroying the garbage because we had him with us. He had protected us by his being with us.

I had denied him his duty. I had taken his responsibility from him. I had negated his life.

I stepped before him and knelt to one knee to meet his gaze. "I acted without thinking. It will not happen again, Agent Boyd - not even with the Arabs."

He stared at me without expression as he thought through my words. He sighed finally and nodded. "You're going to give me everything you got out of that old dame's head?"

"You want it now?"

"What about the Blackest Brotherhood? You aren't going after them now, are you?"

"I'll accede to your judgement on that." I did not feel it necessary to tell him the impetus that had driven Tom into his frenzy and me to ensure a control over that frenzy was now removed. Emil was awake. He walked and talked. He was again one with us.

I was ready to return home and ensure there was no damage to his other abilities. Damage I would be able to see with my own eyes once I was there. Without asking him, I knew Tom would feel the same way.

We were ready to return home and leave crazy black men to this federal policeman. Arab terrorists could wait.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

There was but one more thing I needed do in Washington, DC before we could return to the farm in Flaming and ensure our Emil was as healthy as he had been before an Arab bomb paid for by American money crushed his skull.

Ambassador Paula Gulag's memories of Luke Renfroe were explicit as to his connivance in the destruction of American democracy. He had slipped over the boundary that divided being an accomplice from being an unwitting tool.

Meeting the man and giving him a way out of his troubles, the civilised thing to do was an impossibility. Agent James Boyd had his office set an appointment for me with the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the next day.

It unceasingly amazes me what a guilty mind will immediately agree to when it finds a policeman sniffing about.

Luke Renfroe gazed at me for several moments as the sweet young thing in an out-of-fashion miniskirt escorted me into his office. His eyes telegraphed his recognition of me first. His face went slack then before he could re-form it into a smile. The sweet young thing shut the door behind herself, leaving the two of us along.

"I remember you," the Speaker of the House growled angrily. "What the fuck are you doing here? They said I had a FBI briefing-"

"These are the manners of the person third in line to be President of the United States?" Once in a forgotten world, the most distantly possible heirs were taught proper protocol for even the most unlikeliest encounter. Of course, that had been when Kaiser Franz-Josef ruled the Empire, far removed in time and place from a pudgy Texas street urchin who had single-mindedly propelled himself into the vortex of power in the American democracy.

"My Prince," he greeted me but failed to offer his hand. Instead, he moved quickly behind his desk and began to sit in the chair there. I smiled at the indecision that touched his face as he tried to decide if protocol permitted him to sit while the Prince of a non-existent realm still stood. "Please have a seat," he said and plopped into his chair.

He reminded me then of the petty German bureaucrats who had ruled my Austria for two years before I slept. I chose to stand.

"What brings you to me?" Luke Renfroe asked, looking up to me.

"Politics such as those the Reverend Koughlin espoused were consigned to the trash heap of history some fifty-two years ago, Mr. Speaker."

He stared at me from hooded eyes. "And what's that supposed to mean?

"It means fascism is dead."

"Anybody knows that. This is America, a land a free people-"

"Your adjutant, Moira Writer, and your latest patron are dead. I guess they forgot this was a land of the free - and, perhaps, paid the price?"

"Moira-?" He eyes held the glimmering of fear. "And Paula?"

"Both dead." I smiled. "I'm surprised you didn't already know about your aide, Mr. Speaker. It's several days that she is dead."

"I don't keep a daily attendance roll of my staff," he offered softly.

"The Ambassador died last night."

"How?"

I smiled. "I understand her throat was nearly torn from her - as was her servant. Miss Writer was decapitated."

The Speaker gulped. And pushed back from the desk. "Well, I do appreciate your coming by to tell me this. We can certainly make plans for Moira's funeral-"

"I would hope your country made no effort to honour garbage, Mr. Renfroe. It would leave a bad taste in the mouth of many who lost loved ones to similar garbage."

"We don't care a fuck what any of you has-beens think!" he hissed, glaring at me with hatred.

"You make your feelings very well know, Mr. Renfroe-"

"I'm the Speaker of the House of-"

I smiled. "And I am the Prince von Muribor, a title as important to me as yours is to you. It is also a much more honourable name than yours and what you would bring upon the people of this country."

"You better be careful what you're saying and implying," he growled and came half way around his desk, thinking his bulk might frighten me.

"I suspect your need to be circumspect is past, Herr Renfroe. You shall need resign your seat in this Congress if you would not suffer the same demise as Moira Writer."

His face turned red, his pockmarks glaring in the new coloration. His shock of black hair seemed to stand on end. He stopped at the edge of his desk. "Are you actually threatening me?" he managed.

"I never threaten," I offered quietly. And smiled. "When I promise something I am guaranteed to deliver. Death is not the worst fate a man can face."

"You are threatening me!"

"Not at all. The FBI knows all of the details of your relationships with Koughlin. They also know how you accepted becoming Ambassador Gulag's Crown Princeling. I understand they have strong circumstantial evidence already-" I shrugged. "But I guarantee you shall never successful stand for the elections next year. You either die or have your throat torn out as you attempt to breathe."

I smiled and fixed the sitting room of my house on "E" Street in my mind.. "Your electronic devices haven't recorded my voice, Mr. Renfroe. There is only your word against a harmless foreign national." I clicked my heels and nodded. "I hope to hear you have been intelligent," I told him and dematerialised.

There was one other thing I had not taken care of in Washington. I had forgotten about it until I returned to my sitting room. Was age creeping up on me? Incapacitating me?

Tony. The black lad I once rescued on a winter's night in "P" Street Park and now paid his enrolment in a computer school. A man who had given much but asked nothing in return. A man who was proud enough to be embarrassed accepting any gift, even that of knowledge. He needed assurance of a future once he graduated and I had no doubt he could learn German once I had him in Berlin.

I called him to the house and knew he would soon come to me. That left my companions still sleeping in the chilled afternoon. I smiled. I would not wake them, not directly. Instead, I went to the music room and stood in the doorway, staring at the piano I had not played in a year.

If the security company I employed to protect this house the past year had not followed my precise instructions and brought in a piano tuner, I would be most peeved. And the boys in the rooms above me would wake to less than beautiful music. That realisation brought another smile to my lips.

It was 0100 hours when I appeared in the darkened kitchen of the house in Flaming. My three companions immediately materialised behind me.

|You're here?| Emil queried from near-by.

I turned to the door that led to the outside steps where I had sensed him being. "Emil?"

He chuckled and I saw him. "It's me, ready to welcome my valiant vampire troop home."

"Why aren't you in bed?" Tom demanded.

Emil reached slowly to the counter beside the door and even more slowly raised himself from the chair in which he'd been sitting.

He was nearly unrecognisable. His face was swollen, the tissue about his eyes puffed that he could but squinted. He supported himself by gripping the counter.

I blinked. Tom rushed to him but stopped before he could touch him. He reached out his hand and gently touched Emil's cheek. "You're alive," he breathed.

"And look worse than dead," our Swiss companion laughed.

"It'll heal-" Tom glanced back at me for re-assurance.

I nodded. "Have you eaten?"

Emil shook his head. "Not tonight. Valatin siphoned off blood from one or more of our cows to feed me since - it tastes old."

"That's gruel!" I growled. "You need human - or, better, vampire - blood to heal properly."

Tom's arms went about his chest and drew him to him. "Have some of me-"

Emil's face moved beneath the American's jaw, his lips nuzzling Tom's open neck. "I am hungry," he breathed as he steadied himself against our American.

"Half a litter only," I told him, moving nearer to them. "If you want more, take it from me."

"And from us too," Jody told him, breaking his and Johan's silence since we'd arrived home.

Crimson tears welled in the Swiss youth's eyes and began to trickle down his cheeks. "Meine liebe Freunden," he mumbled and pressed his face against Tom's shirt. "I love all of you so much."

Tom grinned. "Feed, Emil. We have all the time in the world for you to love us once you are healthy again."

Tom's gasp was nearly inaudible as Emil's fangs found his neck. He pulled the Swiss closer as Emil began to lap.

Light flared throughout the kitchen about us and I turned to face Valentin standing at the door of his room wiping sleep from his eyes. "Mein Furst!" He bowed and a smile was beginning to form over his lips when he espied Emil's face nuzzled against Tom's neck. "Gott im Himmel!" His eyes closed quickly, shutting the sight from his mind.

|Mom and Barbara are coming,| Jody telegraphed me and I felt his discomfort at the meeting ahead of him.

|Have Johan give you a full mental picture of a room in his flat in Prague. If Lynda becomes too demanding, simply send yourself there.|

Johan grinned widely at my suggestion and conjured for Jody the most detailed image of a room I had ever seen.

"You have done well, Valentin. Emil is aware-"

"And so weak still, my Prince. This-" he jerked his head at the two vampires at the door without looking at them. "It will help him to heal his wounds?"

"Vampire blood is the best thing for him now."

He opened his eyes, focusing them on me alone. "I offered him mine, my Prince - but he refused."

I gazed at my servant with enhanced respect. "Emil sought not to hurt you, my friend. He knew we would be home tonight."

"Jody!" The boys, Valentin, and I turned as one to face Lynda Renfroe standing in the threshold to the hall. Barbara Nightwing slipped past her and stood facing us from beside her.

|Opps! Jody groaned and smiled sickly. |The shit's hit the fan now. I'm going to get it in spades.|

|Karli, I need more - it's been so long!|

I turned to see Emil push Tom gently from him. I smiled at the Swiss as he faced me.

Jody pushed between us. "My turn," he told me over his shoulder. He grinned at Emil. "Suck me."

"Jody!" Lynda growled and took a step toward him as Emil's lips found his neck. Her eyes widened as the Swiss vampire's fangs bared and pressed against her son's skin. "Jesus shit!" she hissed at the sight of the boy's blood spreading past the Swiss' lips and onto his shirt. "This vampire shit's gone on far enough. Stop it right this fucking minute, goddamn it!"

Valentin moved to the coffee grinder and began to make coffee for the mortals among us.

Tom stepped in front of her and smiled. "Emil needs nourishment and Jody's helping him out," he told her.

"He drinking his blood."

"A little. As he did mine. As he'll do with Karl and Hans. Would you have him die after Karl saved Jody?"

"But he's drinking my son's blood. He's going to kill him."

"Jody can't die unless you cut off his head - or burn him - Ms. Renfroe, he's a vampire like us."

She stared at the American youth, closed her eyes, and nodded.

"Did you boys have fun?" Barbara asked and I smiled my thanks to her for defusing the situation.

"We killed them," Tom answered sheepishly. "It wasn't really fun at all. I just hated them all so much because I thought they'd killed Emil."

Lynda's face was a frown as she stared at her son and Emil, and I didn't dare touch her thoughts and find out what she might be thinking.

|Thank you, sußer Jody,| Emil told the boy and pushed him from him.

"You get enough?" the boy asked.

Emil nodded. |You have shocked your mother enough, Liebchen. Now, pull her back from this strange Chaos she sees you in.|

Jody's nose immediately wrinkled in disgust but he was already smiling as he turned to face his mother. "Hi, Lynda," he told her and took a step toward her.

I noticed Emil gripped the counter to steady himself and almost flew to him. I resisted my impulse, permitting him his pride before these people surrounding him.

"I want to talk to you!" Lynda Renfroe growled at her child. "Now."

Barbara sat at the table and watched her lover step toward the hall, her son in tow.

"Get your frigging ass up here beside me," Lynda demanded without looking back. "I don't feel like yelling so everybody can hear us."

Barbara smiled at me apologetically. "She's a little upset, Prince Karl," she allowed.

"What the fuck do you mean just taking out of here without telling me?" Lynda screamed from the hall. "I mean, it takes that frigging servant miming shit at me for me to learn you've zapped out of here with that - that fucking foreign leach and those totally grown men-!" Lynda yelled at Jody as they entered the hallway. "Jesus! I don't know who's fucking your boytoy ass!"

"Mom! Everybody's going to hear us. You want to ream me a new asshole, wait until we're in your room."

"This is common between them?" I asked Barbara Nightwing suspiciously.

She grinned. "I guess they've got a pretty verbal relationship, don't they?"

"They won't become physical?"

"Lynda just lets off steam - at least, since Jody's got big enough to fight back."

"He's much stronger now than he was a month ago."

"They're just going to yell at each other, Prince Karl. That's all that's going to happen. She needs to get her frustrations out of her system."

"You mean her kid's her whipping boy?" Tom asked.

Barbara appeared puzzled for a moment. "I guess that's sort of how things have turned out. She knows I don't put up with that kind of shit - it just leaves me drained and mad."

"So, she takes her frustrations out on her son?" I asked.

"That's the way it's been with them since Jody was maybe nine. But they egg each other on-"

"They do?"

"Yeah. If Lynda hasn't blown up at him for awhile, Jody'll start in on her."

"I didn't see that in him while he was with us-" I glanced to Johan for confirmation. He shrugged to show his surprise at this new side of his lover. I smiled. "I suspect Ms. Renfroe may be in for a shock this evening."

"I won't believe Jody'd hurt her."

"No. But he may well simply leave her yelling at empty space."

"I'm eighteen, Lynda!" Jody growled loudly. "I'm legal and I'll do what I damned well want to-"

"You do what I tell you to do as long as you live under my roof," she yelled back.

|A man doesn't need submit himself to this,| I told the American boy. |Leave her and I'll send Johan to Prague.|

His smiling face appeared in my mind and Lynda Renfroe screamed.

Barbara stared at me in shock and ran to the hall and their room beyond. I grinned broadly and turned to the Czech. "Go, Johan. Jody waits for you in your flat."

He nodded and dematerialised.

"The reporter certainly acts differently than she has since I awakened," Emil mumbled.

"How's that?" Tom asked, glancing toward the hall.

"She worried about the boy all the time. It did no good for me to tell her he was safe with our Karli and you."

Tom chuckled. "It must have been pretty strange growing up in that house."

"That is an understatement," I mumbled in agreement.

"Think the kid's going to want to strut his stuff in our movies?" our American companion asked quietly and I whirled to stare at him.

"Do you think he would do that?" Emil asked before I could say anything.

"He's going to need a job if Ms. Renfroe isn't supporting him."

"If he can act, perhaps the two of them may be cast in something not so pornographic?" I offered.

Tom glanced at Emil before turning back to me. He grinned. "Maybe. But he does have a cute set of buns. I'd bet our stable of Euro studs would like to ride them at least once."

I studied his face, attempting to gage his seriousness. "Are you saying that is the price of our helping him grow up?"

"Karli," Emil said, "There is no price on our generosity. But if he wants to earn his own money-"

I nodded. I could agree to that.

THE END