Work Text:
Extracts from the Private Journal of Victoria Matheson-Quinn
Apartment 10-E
University Towers North
Arkham, Massachusetts
July 16, 2032
7:58 AM
Arkham's a strange city, and everyone knows it. Boston and Providence like to run us down by claiming that old Adonijah Hutchinson -- who founded the University and built a town around it -- was a delusionary madman who thought he could talk to demons. They say it like they're joking, but they're two-thirds correct anyway. And as for the other third . . . Adonijah didn't just think he could talk to demons. He talked to them, all right, and unfortunately for Adonijah's sanity, some of them actually listened.
The fact that Adonijah Hutchinson finished his life as a raving loon didn't stop his University from prospering, and it didn't keep word from getting out that Arkham Town was a refuge for demons whose home dimensions had turned unfriendly. Since most of Adonijah's demonic immigrants wanted nothing more than to escape notice both here and where they'd come from, things remained fairly low-key for almost four centuries.
That was before a Hellmouth started rumbling under the University Quadrangle. The way Spike and Dr. R. explained it to me, there's lots of evil power in a Hellmouth, and whoever controls it gets a share. Something like that doesn't just draw troublemakers; it draws ambitious troublemakers with projects in mind.
Which of course made it all the Hellmouth's fault that I ended up sitting in Dr. R.'s kitchen in the early hours of this morning while Spike -- the same Spike who was supposed to be my mentor in mayhem and personal walking encyclopedia of esoteric lore -- explained that the senior members of the most notorious vampire clan in history thought that he was the Master of Arkham.
Dr. R. didn't look too pleased with the idea. "Tell me again why their opinion is supposed to matter."
"It doesn't," Spike said. "Not to me, at any rate. But it does matter to other people."
"This has to do with why Nathan was carved up so bad that I had to stake him," I guessed. "It was a vamp that did it, right?"
"Right," he said; and Dr. R. said, "No big surprises there. Another member of the Order of Aurelius?"
Spike gave a deep sigh -- for nonverbal punctuation, so far as I could tell; it's not like he needs to breathe -- and said, "Who else would be crazy enough?"
I said, "It's not anybody you . . . um . . . know personally, is it?"
He shrugged. "The whole bloody Order is genealogy-mad; we all know each other, one way or another. But this one isn't close family, if that's what you mean."
"Can you give us a specific name and lineage?" Dr. R. asked. She still wasn't completely happy with Spike. He'd gotten himself cut up and beaten while he was off quizzing the elders for information, and I don't think she was looking kindly on vampire family politics at the moment.
"Bloke who calls himself Azrael. One of Luke's, apparently."
"Who's Luke?" I said.
"Right-hand vamp to the old Master of the Order," Spike said. "Dusted years ago, him and his sire both. Not my favorite person, the few times I ever met him, and I doubt I'll like his offspring any better."
July 17, 2032
1:15 AM
Not too surprisingly, the new-vamp-in-town problem still hasn't gone away.
I dreamed about it all last night, during the hour and a half of sleep I got after Spike took himself back to his apartment; and I thought about it all day in school when I should have been reviewing my notes for next Monday's test. I was still chewing over it in my mind when the time came to patrol.
"Do you think Azrael's his real name?"
Spike and I were doing an early-evening sweep through one of Arkham's older cemeteries. Nobody's been buried in Greenwood since the end of the Civil War or thereabouts; we weren't looking for new-made vamps, but for squatters from out of town who liked the classic graveyard ambience.
Spike snorted in reply to my question. "Of course it isn't his real name. Half the vampires in existence rename themselves as soon as they're turned, and the other half have their sires do it for them."
"Which half were you in, Spike?"
"I wasn't about to let anyone else do it," he said. "Considering the taste for overblown antiquity that most of the Order's got, I'd have been damned lucky not to have been renamed Heliogabalus."
"That would have been a bad thing," I agreed. "So this Azrael person -- now that he's officially got your attention, what's his next move?"
"Depends on how much of a traditionalist he is," Spike said. Then he halted and held up a hand for quiet, which meant we'd come within vampire hearing range of our target for the evening.
Greenwood Cemetery was spread out over the slope of a long hill, with a miniature Grecian temple perched on the crestline above the ranks of tombstones. The half-sized structure was still roomy enough to provide shade and concealment even in daylight, and this would make the third bunch of vampires we'd cleared out of there this month.
More of the Hellmouth Effect, Dr. R. had said while Spike and I were making our plans -- roaming vamps moving in and taking over spaces that used to belong to runaways and homeless people and other urban strays. "And the Chamber of Commerce brags about street crime and litter going down, and never mentions how the death-and-disappearance rates have skyrocketed . . . ."
"We're doing our bit," I'd told her. "Cleaning up the city one vamp-nest at a time."
After Spike and I reached the lower steps of the temple, we split up. He circled around to the rear while I mounted the steps leading up to the shadowed interior. There were vamps inside, I could feel it without seeing them. Well, they wouldn't be in there for long.
I paused on the threshold.
"Hello," I said to the shadows.
Three of the vamps came rushing out of the darkness at me almost before my vocal chords quit vibrating. The brave ones, maybe, or the ones who thought they could enhance their reputations by going after a Slayer.
It didn't matter. I staked the first vamp from the front as he came at me, striking under the breastbone and up in the first blow I'd ever learned, then staked the second one between the ribs from behind in a spinning follow-through on the same motion.
The third vampire had more sense than the first two; he danced back a pace and made me come to him. Either he'd known some combat moves before he was turned, or he'd taken the trouble to learn a few afterward -- but not enough of them. He certainly hadn't studied under William the Bloody, who'd killed two Slayers before he hit the century mark and whose hands-on approach to intensive training sometimes made me think he was trying to kill a third one with overwork.
We traded a few blows -- after seeing what had happened to his pals, this guy had more sense than to go for a straightforward lunge-and-feed maneuver -- but it wasn't long before I had him pinned under me with his face in the dirt.
"You're new in town," I said. I set the point of my stake against his back, right where one hard push would let it slide past bone and do the most good. "What made you decide to take on the Slayer?"
"Ow! If I tell you, will you let me go?"
"Sorry, no. But whoever told you Arkham was an open city and easy pickings didn't do you any favors; I'm giving you a chance to get even before I dust you."
The vampire flopped and squirmed underneath me like a landed fish, trying to get away. I kept him pinned and leaned on the stake a little harder.
"Clock's ticking," I said.
Vampire loyalty's a funny thing, according to Spike. It goes up and down the bloodline fairly strong, but outside the line it's a lot weaker -- and inside the line or out, two things as strong or stronger are self-preservation and revenge. Vamps are real big on revenge.
Tonight's vampire had figured out by now that self-preservation wasn't part of the game. Now I was waiting to find out how he felt about getting even.
It didn't take long.
"Azrael," the vampire mumbled into the dirt. "Big-time elder vamp. Put the word out that he was going to make a play for Master of Arkham, said anybody who came in now as a foot soldier would own a patch of territory when he was done."
"And you believed him." I pushed the stake home and sneezed a little when the dust cloud rose. "Which is why you never made it past the 'disposable minion' stage."
"It's a sad fact, but there's no use denying it." Spike came strolling around the corner of the temple as I finished speaking. Judging by his tone of voice, he'd had a good time doing what Dr. R. refers to as channeling one's more aggressive impulses into a socially acceptable outlet. "Most vampires make flatworms look intelligent."
"How many of them tried to get past you out the back?"
"Only two," he said. "Barely enough to work up a sweat over."
"You don't sweat," I pointed out.
"True enough," Spike agreed cheerfully. Fights to the death usually put him into a good mood afterward. I'd guess that it was a vampire thing if I didn't sometimes feel that way myself.
I said, "Let's take a quick turn through the financial district and call it a night. I happen to know that Dr. R. left some cold beer in the refrigerator, and I don't think she intended it for me."
"Ah. Think she's forgiven me for getting myself cut up in the pursuit of knowledge?"
"Maybe a little," I said. "But don't expect friendly conversation out of her for a while yet. She's having to stay over at the lab tonight because worrying about you distracted her from something-or-other she says she should have been keeping track of and didn't."
Spike looked curious. "That Mars robot she's been working on with your dad?"
"It's not a robot." I'd heard the lecture so many times as a little kid that by now it was automatic. "It's a remote telepresence avatar. I think the problem tonight is with something else, though."
"Not surprising. Hellmouth energy makes technology do funny things sometimes."
"Funny as in 'breaks down a lot more often'?" I could see how increased mechanical failure might irritate Dr. R. quite a bit, especially if she thought she'd let her vigilance slip for some reason.
"That, too," he said. "But the big problems come from stuff that works better than it should."
I thought about asking him for examples, but something in his voice made me think it might be a bad idea, and we hiked the rest of the way to Arkham's financial district in more-or-less companionable silence.
The district's an easy patrol -- one of the reasons we'd picked tonight for the graveyard sweep. All the banks and brokerage houses empty themselves out at the end of the working day, and the occasional midnight-oil-burning over-achiever isn't enough to support a regular population of predators. We could give the territory a quick once-over and then head back to University Towers, where I could ply Spike with some of Dr. R.'s cold beer while I worked on getting stories out of him about her magic-using past. So far I hadn't had much luck, but I was thinking the beer might make a difference.
I wasn't expecting a strange vampire to step out of the narrow service alley that ran between the First National Bank of Arkham and the law firm of Biddle and Beane. He was tall -- taller than Spike, which isn't actually all that hard, since while Spike may be sudden death on two feet he still isn't particularly big -- and taller than me. And I take after my ancestors on Poppa's side, the ones who used to chase lions across the veldt with spears.
The new guy looked like the lead dancer in a ballet company full of well-toned ectomorphs. He wore skintight trousers and a stretch net t-shirt, and his heavy dark hair fell down past his shoulders. Even in vamp-face he was gorgeous.
"William the Bloody," he said.
Spike gave him a brief nod. "Azrael."
"And your lovely companion for the evening --?"
"Is the Slayer," I said.
"Ah." Azrael switched back to his human face and raised an eyebrow. Vampire features don't have much range of expression beyond "fierce" and "hungry" -- "snide" takes a level of fine-tuning they just haven't got. "I'd heard that you were keeping bad company these days, William, but as usual the reality exceeds even the gossip."
"I expect that it does," said Spike. He'd gone vamp-faced himself while I wasn't looking, but was otherwise keeping easy and relaxed, his hands in his pockets and his head a little to one side, like he was watching an amusing bit of street theater. "Then you'll have also heard that I'm the Master of Arkham, which means that as long as you're in my town you have to play by my rules."
Let it never be said that I don't know my cue when I hear it. "Can I kill him now, Spike, or do I have to explain a bunch of stuff to him first?"
Azrael's lip curled. "I am familiar with your rules," he said. "When I am the Master of Arkham, they will change."
"Will they, now?" Spike glanced over in my direction. "Go ahead, Slayer, and save me the trouble."
I had my stake in my hand already; all I'd needed was the word. I moved in fast, going for a line that would give me a clear shot at Azrael's heart if it turned out that he'd let himself get distracted by taunting Spike. If he wasn't distracted -- and I didn't actually expect that he would be -- then it would give me a hopefully-nonfatal look at his fighting style before the two of us got down to serious business.
My stake went right through him, and he disappeared.
"Damn," I said. At least I'd managed to recover without stumbling, so any spectators -- and there had to be spectators; nobody sets up a trick like that and doesn't hang around to see the results -- would have to do without the chance to snicker at a Slayer tripping over her own feet.
"Thought it might be something like that," Spike said, sounding unsurprised. "No smell."
I was vibrating all over with unspent adrenaline. "And you just let me -- ! "
"I wanted to make sure I was right," he said. "And this is vampire politics we're dealing with, and Aurelian politics at that, which means that if one of us is going to look a bit silly . . . well, better you than me."
"Sometimes I think I hate you."
"Be more surprising if you didn't." He went vamp-faced again for a moment, yellow eyes flickering from shadow to shadow at the same time as his nostrils flared with a deep, indrawn breath. Another moment, and his eyes were blue again, his forehead smooth. "Show's over for the night, I think. Let's get you home."
We made it to the Towers without any more interruptions, and I practiced my unauthorized-entry skills on the rear door over the loading dock, just to demonstrate to Spike that I remembered how. He'd shown me the trick a week or so back, after I'd pointed out to him that the good guys weren't the only ones who could put locks on doors, and who knew what sorts of places a Slayer might have to get into someday?
Once we reached the apartment, though, I made sure to enter our security code into the doorpad like a proper law-abiding citizen. When you have the best roboticist on the east coast, and maybe in the whole country, performing unauthorized-by-the-landlord household upgrades on a random basis, you learn in a hurry that it's better to be safe than sorry. The latest wrinkle -- that I knew of, anyhow -- was an ID sniffer built into the pad, set to match individual biochemical signatures against a list of known trusted invitees.
Sometimes I think Dr. R. is a little bit paranoid.
I said as much to Spike while I was fetching his beer from the refrigerator. He shook his head.
"Nah. That's just Red giving proper thought to securing her perimeter. 'Paranoid' would be if she'd booby-trapped the lock."
"You're the expert." I poured myself a tall glass of milk and sat down across the kitchen table from Spike. "So . . . what about our vanishing friend Azrael? Was it magic?"
"Could have been."
"Could have? Spike, he disappeared into thin air as soon as I touched him!"
"That he did," Spike agreed. "And magic could have done it, right enough. But so could any of half-a-dozen gadgets Red or somebody like her could cobble together over an afternoon out of spare parts."
I thought about that for a minute. The longer I thought, the less I liked it.
"So -- you're saying that Azrael has either a spellworker or a technician working for him?"
"If he isn't one or the other himself."
"How likely is that, really?"
Spike shrugged. "It's not impossible. I've done a ritual or two in my day, and rigged the lair to run on stolen electric while I was at it."
"You're a regular Jack-of-all-evil-trades, aren't you, Spike?"
"Don't laugh. Freeloading off of decent society, contributing to the ongoing energy crisis . . . plenty of evil there for a self-disrespecting vamp."
"Right," I said, and left it at that. "So we've established that Azrael might have pulled off the special effects all by his ownsome. The next question is -- would he do it that way?"
Spike looked at his beer bottle as though he expected to find answers written on the label. After a while he said, "Probably not. We know that he's been recruiting, thanks to your late acquaintance back in Greenwood . . . and part of the 'master of the city' act is having minions to do the hands-on work."
"Talk about the idle aristocracy," I said.
Then something else occurred to me.
"Spike," I said carefully, "if you're the current Master of Arkham, and if the Master of Arkham has to have minions, then who exactly does Azrael think those minions are?"
He didn't say anything, and that by itself was answer enough. I figured it was time to get him another beer out of the refrigerator.
"Dr. R.," I said, "is not going to be happy about this."