Fire and Blood, Part 3 (Patreon)

Next chapter: Bill and his companion search for traces of the White Court, whilst others are looking for them. Well, her. Sadly, a washed-up detective isn't that high on anyone's priority list....

Part 3:

“I don’t see why you care,” she was saying as they continued past the bar, leaving the catcalls and sneers of the skinheads behind. “It’s just words from idiots. I mean, I don’t get offended when you say things about reptiles.”

Bill snorted, choosing to ignore the implicit insult. She seemed genuinely confused, and that pissed him off even more. “You’ve lived among humans for how many centuries, and you still don’t get racism,” he growled disbelievingly, trying to loosen her grip on his arm. Normally she hated to be touched – he still had a faint scar from the first time he’d tried to do something as inoffensive as grab her shoulder, but tonight’s sleuthing required it. He was playing himself – a down-on-his-luck private dick looking for work, no matter what its providence. She was his ‘sugar baby’, there to get drunk, draw attention away from him and lull would-be suitors into foolish and revealing boasts. It would be hard to sell that if she wouldn’t let even him touch her. So far, they’d gotten a lot of leads on drug deals, enforcer work and over a dozen propositions from various lowlives trying to impress her, but so far nothing smelled like Court activity.

She wanted to draw them out with her vigilante act, spreading pimps, drug dealers and muggers across the pavement but she was getting more and more careless. Bill understood why she wanted the Court, but she was taking too many risks. If Akram found them before they found him, he wouldn’t show up with just ten men.

She giggled drunkenly, wobbling on her feet. By his reckoning, she should be dead from alcohol poisoning by now, but he didn’t even know if she was actually intoxicated or just playing at it and she pressed herself closer against him as they headed towards the next site to cross off their list.

Bill was still off-balance from her insistence on that bit of verisimilitude and growing more uncomfortable with it. He didn’t mind having a pretty girl hanging off his arm, but knowing what was underneath her masque spoiled any attraction.

That, and she was hot. It seemed like she was even warmer than usual, but that was probably because they were out hunting. He looked down and with a touch of trepidation, moved her hand to a slightly cooler part of his arm. She wasn’t wearing the same ‘outfit’: her hair was dark blonde and her eyes were hazel. The sight of a young white woman on the arm of a pushing-40 black man was what had prompted a few choice words and catcalls from the punks outside the Storm Shelter, a skinhead bar that the Court liked to recruit anonymous and expendable underlings from. 

From what Bill understood, the Court’s true nature would have disgusted their pawns, but none of them ever got that deep into the onion. As someone not as white as the driven snow, there was no chance Bill could get any cooperation from these assholes, but she had insisted at least doing a walk-by, in case she detected any familiar scents, but she’d said that all she could smell was sweat, vomit and cheap liquor.

She snorted, drawing his attention back to the here and now. “Oh, I know what it is. I just think it’s hilarious.”

“Maybe for someone who can change what she looks like anytime she wants,” Kingsley growled. “Most of us don’t have that luxury and there’s plenty of baggage that goes with that.”

She gestured dismissively. “It always amazes me that when you don’t have enough divisions, you have to create them. ‘She’s a woman,’ ‘He’s a Muslim,’ ‘She’s an atheist,’ ‘He’s gay,’ Always something new to kill each other over. All that strife and you still spread over the planet.” She made a disgusted sound.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that you didn’t have any wars.”

“Oh, we did. We had wars that would have shamed Alexander’s finest battles,” she said with an air of nostalgia. “Fields burned with our fire and were stained with our blood, forever poisoned.” Kingsley suppressed a shiver at the thought of that as she continued. “We had our own disagreements and divisions. I just find yours funnier. That you make yourselves captives to them, always looking for another reason to beat each other over the head. And you still won.”

“Guess that says something, huh?”

“Yes. Humans fuck too much.” Her voice grew a little distant, a waver in her stride. 

Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, that hadn’t been it. “What?”

“My last breeding cycle was two hundred years ago,” she sighed. “Luckily, I was able to find a mate. He was a decent specimen and a pleasant lover, but after two weeks of attempts, I began to worry that he was sterile.”

With anyone else, he might have snidely suggested that it wasn’t her partner that was the problem. He’d made a similar comment some weeks ago and she’d nearly killed him. After that, he’d never brought up the topic of children again. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

Her voice darkened. “The White Court, of course. I came back from market to find that what was left of him. Some of them were still there, waiting for his wife. They were expecting a human.” The temperature of her skin rose, a waft of steam escaping from her mouth. “They’d denied me a mate and I was at the peak of my... condition.”

“And they learned that the female of the species is more dangerous than the male.”

“I always liked Kipling,” she nodded. “My kind... when we enter our breeding cycle, we become...” she searched for words. “Difficult. Mercurial. Violent.”

Bill knew better than to draw attention to the irony of that statement. “What happens if you don’t find a mate?”

Her eyes half-lidded, a dreamlike quality to her words. “Increased aggression, both physical and sexual. Increased metabolism. Inability to maintain a masque. Loss of rationality; atavistic urges dominate our thought processes. Propensity for arson. We start killing and fucking and burning until the need passes. It can be days, or weeks.”

Bill’s lips thinned, all lingering anger over the skinheads’ insults fading, threatening to be replaced with sheer terror. “How are these cycles triggered?” he asked.

“There are different ways. Attraction to a mate can trigger an event. High ambient temperatures can stimulate a cycle as well. We do like the heat.”

Kingsley swallowed. “When was the last time it was this hot?”

She laughed giddily, not understanding his question. “About two hundred years ago.”

“Ah,” Bill said. “I see.” Despite the uncomfortable heat of her hand on his arm, a sudden chill sent goosebumps running over his flesh.

“Why?” she asked, her voice taking on that singsong quality that, like everything else about her, was simultaneously intriguing and deeply disturbing. “Are you thinking of applying for a position as a stud?” Her hand tightened painfully on his arm, her claws digging into his skin. There was no trace of amusement or teasing in the question. Bill didn’t even know if it was possible, but at even the slightest hint that he – or any human male – might be looking to impregnate her, she’d kill him. That had come up before, too. 

“No,” Bill winced through the pain. “I was just thinking that that puts my dry spell to shame.” He didn’t know if it was a reaction to their dwindling – or non-existent – numbers, but her views on racial – or rather, species – mingling were something that those skinheads would find common cause with. 

Mollified, she relaxed slightly, the hint of a smile on her lips. “There’s a difference between breeding and sex.” The obvious question dangled in the air, but Bill wasn’t fool enough to take it.

Or at least he thought he wasn’t. “If you haven’t seen another of your kind for two hundred years...” the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them and he tensed, expecting to need an ice pack.

Instead, she laughed. The sound was mellifluous, but he didn’t know if her amusement was genuine or another trick of her skill with voices. “Sometimes, one of you impresses me. Extraordinarily beautiful, smart, skilled or something else that catches my eye. They usually survive.” There was a teasing light in her eyes as she winked at him.

He snorted. Mercurial... The word flashed through his mind before he’d realized he was thinking it. She’s never this friendly, Kingsley realized with a start.

“Your heart rate just increased,” she noted. “Is something wrong? Or were you thinking of all the grunting and thrusting?”

“Yeah,” Bill answered, trying to project assurance despite the sickly smile on his face. He patted her hand comfortingly, as any husband would. “That’s it.”

She laughed, patting his cheek in a pantomime of affection. “Humans.”

Bill didn’t answer, looking up at the sun as it set over the jungle of concrete and glass, the orange glow making it seem as if the city itself were ablaze.

~

She dreamt of fire.

Clad in battle-mail sculpted by a Master’s hands with the symbols of her bloodline and allegiance, she raised her sword to the sky and roared a battlecry, joining the chorus sung by ten thousand throats. She rode no steed, for horses would not seat her kind and her wings were bunched beneath her armour. Her tail, plated and tipped with a spiked club, twitched eagerly as she looked to her lord’s banner.

Across the plain, the host of Lady Edrima stood against them, drummers pounding a dreadful cadence, stoking the warriors into a killing frenzy. In answer, her lord’s musicians blew their horns and the rustle of the Aerys’ wings stirred the dry wind, the intoxicating aroma of kill-scent making her drool. The horns blew again and the advance began...

...arrows sang as they were released, falling down upon their ranks, the synchronized downbeat of wings as the Aerys in their light armour took to the skies, falling back along the arrows’ path to target the archers, duelling their opposite numbers in mid-air...

...she was covered in blood, laughing as she cleaved her way through the enemy’s ranks, her greatsword keening as it cut the air, the screams of the enemy music to her blood-fevered mind...

...ahead, she could see the banners of Edrima’s personal guardsmen as they cut a path through her kinsmen for their lady’s escape. One of them saw her and raised his sword. She accepted the challenge, tearing through those between her and the escaping liege...

...the pounding of drums and the wail of the horns, the shriek of blades, the cries of the victors and the wails of the dying. Metal clashed on metal as she fought Edrima herself, her massive greatsword parrying the liege-lord’s blows, driving the lady back. Her foot slipped on a patch of bloody earth and she stumbled, Edrima lunging into the opening...

...she screamed in victory, holding Lady Edrima’s head high for all to see, a cry of challenge and dominance. The trickle of retreating soldiers became a flood and then the opposing army was in full retreat, their will to fight broken by their liege’s death...

...kneeling before her lord, offering him the head of his rival, not daring to look him in the eyes. These were the days before masques, when they had hidden from no one and the radiance of his being humbled her. He told her to rise...

...sweating, burning, clawing as he took her, her teeth in his shoulder, his claws in her back, her tongue lapping at the wounds she’d inflicted, tasting his blood as she moved against his powerful body, calling out for more...

...strong, he was strong...

...our child will be strong...

When she awoke, her cheeks were wet.

~

Bill lurched into his bed just as the sun was coming up. “She’s getting bored,” he groaned to himself, his face buried in the pillows. “Three nights of this and nothing. No bites, no hint of the Court. She’s going to go out and start killing again.”

“Of course she is,” a stranger’s voice answered.

Bill’s eyes snapped open and he was instantly awake, rolling across the bed and coming up with his pistol aimed at the intruder. His visitor was a well-dressed man with pale skin and black hair. He didn’t seem to care that Kingsley had a pistol aimed at his heart. “She’ll start doing that even if your little trawls were successful. She’ll be hungry. Are there any good butcher shops in the area? Or wholesalers? I would point those out to her, though she’ll still have the instinct to hunt.”

“Who...” Bill growled. “Who the fuck are you? Are you one of those White Court assholes?”

A smile – thin, unpleasant and superior – touched the man’s lips. “Hardly. I’m simply an... interested party. I’ve seen the news and I simply had to come looking for this ‘Heat Wave Vigilante’.”

“How did you find me?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite as easy as my appearance here may suggest. But I do have some experience in these matters and anything I set my mind to, I accomplish. So,” the man raised an eyebrow, gesturing to Kingsley’s gun. “Are you going to lower that?”

“No.”

“Smart man. I wouldn’t, either. It won’t help you, but it’s still a smart decision.” Bill’s visitor pointed to his coat. “May I?”

“Slowly.”

“Of course.” The stranger reached into his jacket and pulled out a small business card, holding it towards Bill. When Kingsley didn’t move to take it, the other man sighed theatrically and set it on the nightstand. “Give her this, would you? I’d like to meet her.”

“What makes you think she wants to meet you?”

“Oh, she will. Especially now.” The man stood, smoothing out the creases in his clothes. “I’ll be off now, I think. Just be sure to give her that, will you?”

He turned to go. “Wait,” demanded Kingsley. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Ah, well – if we had a few hours, I could answer that for you. Sadly, neither of us has the time. If she asks, though... tell her my name is Du Noir.” He smiled then, with seeming warmth, but the expression never quite reached his eyes. “Au revoir, Monsieur Kingsley.” The door clicked shut behind him.

Bill slumped back against the sheets. “Anyone else here?” he called out to the empty apartment. “Akram? Elvis? No? Anyone?”

When he finally fell asleep, he dreamt of a city in flames and a great red beast curled around a clutch of eggs, watching him with unblinking golden eyes.