The Last of the Red-Hot Vampires Read online

  "She is a virtue," Theo said as he rubbed his chin. The sweep of his thumb across his square chin distracted me for a moment, but I was firm with myself and looked at the grain of the wood in the door behind him, instead. "She cannot die unless she is removed from the Court. If she was in danger from someone, that would explain why I had such a difficult time tracking her down…Very well, continue. Who did she say she was in danger from?"

  "From whom," Sarah corrected with a smile. Theo looked at her. "Sorry. I'm a writer. It's second nature."

  "She didn't say. She just told me she was in danger, and that if she stayed, all would be destroyed. She was very drama queen about the whole thing, frankly, which is why I had no trouble believing she wasn't real. What exactly is a virtue, other than the normal definition of the word?"

  Theo's black-eyed gaze swept over me. I wouldn't be a woman if I didn't notice that it lingered for a shade too long on my breasts. "You really don't know, do you?"

  "If I knew, I wouldn't ask. How can someone not be killed just because they're a member of a court?"

  He got out of the chair and paced to the end of the room, turning to face us. "This complicates the situation greatly. If you unintentionally summoned Hope, and she was desperate enough to use the escape you offered…but I'm getting ahead of myself. A virtue, my dear mortal, is a member of the Court of Divine Blood."

  I sighed and leaned back on the headboard, adjusting a pillow so it supported my aching shoulder. "You're going to say things I don't want to hear, aren't you? You're going to spout all sorts of make-believe stuff in such a way that Sarah will buy it hook, line, and sinker, and I'll spend the entire rest of the trip trying to explain to her why immortal people don't suddenly pop into faery rings."

  "I've heard of the Court of Divine Blood," Sarah said slowly, her eyes scrunched up as she hunted through her memory. "It's another name for heaven, isn't it?"

  "No," Theo said, much to my relief. Religion was a bit of a touchy subject with me, one I certainly had no intention of discussing with a strange man who quite possibly had mental issues. "The concept of heaven is loosely based on the Court, but the Court of Divine Blood is not dogma for any specific religion. It just is."

  "Good gravy, you're not going to tell me that the woman who snuck up behind me and popped out when I wasn't looking is an angel!" I sent Theo a look of utter disbelief.

  He looked annoyed in return. "I just told you that the Court is not heaven. There are similarities, but that is all. The members of the Court are not angels, although their jobs are classified in a hierarchy that Christians took for their own. A virtue is a member of the second household, and controls weather."

  "The cloud!" Sarah said triumphantly. "I knew it! Proof! Oh my god, that means you…" Her mouth hung open for a second as she looked at me with huge eyes. "…you spoke to an angel! She gave you her job! Good heavens! My best friend is an angel!"

  I rolled my eyes. "Theo just said that there are no such things as angels. Use your common sense, Sarah. Some woman pops out of the woods at me, and you're convinced that everything Theo says is gospel…no pun intended. Who's to say the two of them aren't working together? He kidnapped us, after all. This is no doubt some elaborate scheme to get money from us." I thinned my lips at Theo. "And it's not going to work. Get out."

  "Portia!"

  "Pardon?" Theo asked, frowning.

  I stood up slowly, holding my lamp. "I said your little scheme isn't going to work, and I want you out of here. Right now. I've listened to this crap long enough."

  "Portia!" Sarah gasped again, looking appalled at my bad manners.

  I didn't care. I was sore, tired, and sick of being made a fool. I wasn't going to stand for any more bull from this man and his accomplice.

  Theo straightened up and looked as intimidating as he could, but I'd had enough. I didn't care what he did, so long as he did it away from me. I stomped over to the door, and jerked it open. "Leave. Now!"

  "And just how do you expect to bend me to your will? Scream? I told you, no one below would hear you over the music."

  Anger, frustration, and the suspicion that I had been made to look a fool grew within me, until I thought I would explode with it. I sucked in a deep breath, prepared to rip him up one side and down the other, but before I could, a storm broke directly overhead. Brilliant blue light exploded around the pub, followed immediately by thunder so loud it shook not only the glass in the windows, but could be felt in the walls and floor of the pub. Before the rumble of thunder disappeared, the lights went out, the music of the pub suddenly silenced. The silence was almost smothering in its thickness.

  I tipped my head back and screamed for all I was worth. Sarah threw herself sideways and covered her ears as I released every bit of pent-up emotion. It was a scream the likes of which I'd never made before, and one I doubted I'd be able to duplicate.

  Sudden voices from below indicated they had heard me.

  Theo snarled something in the darkness. I stumbled to the bed, finding and clutching Sarah as she made odd little squeaking noises. Lights flashed in the hallway outside my room, visible through the open door. A shadow a hair darker than the surrounding blackness paused in the doorway for a moment.

  "You foolish woman," the Theo-shaped shadow said. "Do you not realize you will need a champion for the trials? To try it alone is folly. You will end up destroying yourself…and me as well."

  The pub owner called up the stairs to ask if we were all right, the light from his flashlight flickering and dancing in an erratic pattern on the wall opposite us. I slumped against Sarah, relieved when Theo's shadow merged into that of the hallway, his last words echoing in my mind.

  "I will not let you escape me as Hope did."

  Chapter 5

  "Could you have possibly been any ruder to poor Theo?"

  "Shhh. Madame What's-her-face is gesturing for you. No doubt she wants to anoint you or something."

  "It's Mystic, not Madame. Mystic Bettina, as you know well. Oooh! She must have picked me to be one of her assistants! Fabulous! I'll be in a perfect position for unbiased observation." Sarah jumped out of her seat and hurried over to where the local medium was standing with two women.

  "Very unbiased," I said to myself, then smiled reassuringly at the man on my left as he glanced at me.

  He leaned over and whispered, "Is this your first séance?"

  I nodded.

  "Mine too," he said in a confiding tone, and hazarded a shy smile. "My wife—that's her there with the others—is a member of the local ghost hunter's group, so she's been wanting to come to a séance for a long time. I'm not sure I believe in all this." He chuckled a little, watching me carefully to see if I was going to mock him for his skepticism.

  "I'm a scientist by trade, and a natural-born skeptic," I assured him. I dropped my voice a little so the other four people in the room couldn't overhear us. "To be honest, I'm just here to explain to my friend how all the tricks are done. She's one of those people who is ready to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter how unlikely the situation."

  "Ah, a true believer," my new friend said, nodding. "There are a lot of those in the ghost hunter's group. I'm Milo, by the way."

  "Portia," I said, shaking his hand. "Shall we join forces to bring reason to our loved ones?"

  He glanced nervously at his wife, who was approaching the table with the small woman who claimed she was a "world-renowned medium." "Indeed we could, although I hesitate to disappoint my wife. She wants so much to contact her father, you see. He passed on when she was quite young. Still, I've told her that to have so much faith in such things is sheer folly."

  "I've found that faith is vastly overrated," I said softly, then turned to Sarah as she slid into the seat next to me. "So are you to hold the ghostly tambourine, or rap on the table at the appropriate time?"

  She whapped me on the arm and whispered at me to behave myself.

  "Considering all that we've been through today, I think I'm behaving
with complete circumspection," I said just as quietly, gingerly moving my shoulder. The muscles, which had been strained but not torn, protested the movement.

  Sarah noticed my grimace of pain, and leaned even closer. "Are you sure you're all right? Maybe I shouldn't have brought you tonight. What with the virtue and Theo and that horrible storm you conjured up—"

  "Will you stop? I didn't conjure up anything. The pub owner himself said it was perfectly normal for storms to whip up like that."

  "Yes, but he couldn't explain the way it completely disappeared a minute later. Nor why just the lights at the pub went out, and none of the other buildings nearby."

  "The fuses were blown, nothing more. It's quite common in buildings close to a ground lightning strike."

  "Hrmph."

  Mystic Bettina (the name had me snickering softly to myself when we were introduced) returned to the round glass table with the others. Milo, Sarah, and I were already seated; Mystic Bettina took an elaborately carved chair I mentally dubbed "the throne," flashing a smile around the table. There were only five of us attending the séance—Milo and his wife, an elegant black woman who clutched a tattered bible, Sarah, and me. "Are we all settled, then? Very good. I'd like to welcome all of you to my mystic circle. I am sure that we will have a very good experience tonight with the spirits. They always know when people sympathetic to their beings are present."

  I was going to say something, but Sarah was still miffed at me for the way I had driven off Theo the kidnapper.

  "I'm afraid one of us here is a skeptic," she said, shooting me an accusatory look.

  "Oh, but everyone is welcome at my table," Bettina said quickly, turning her overbright smile on me. "Even non-believers. Especially non-believers! It is perfectly healthy to be skeptical of something so beyond our grasp as the spirit world."

  "See?" I said softly to Sarah, nudging her with my elbow. "Skepticism is good!"

  She made a sour face.

  "It is one reason why I have a glass table," Bettina continued, nodding toward the table upon which were spread a number of tiles painted with the letters of the alphabet, like oversized Scrabble tiles. In the center, a normal-looking drinking glass sat upside down on a small square of crimson silk. "I do not want anyone to be able to claim the events they witness have a mundane explanation. There is no trickery performed here!"

  Sarah elbowed me back. I ignored it and carefully examined the table. Despite the dim lighting of the small séance room, everyone's legs were clearly visible beneath the table.

  "Now, if we're ready, perhaps we can begin with a prayer."

  I bit my lip and said nothing as Bettina clasped her hands together and bowed her head before offering up a prayer of understanding and protection. Everyone followed suit except me—I took the opportunity to look around the room, trying to find anywhere an accomplice could hide, locations of possible hidden projectors, and anything out of the ordinary.

  "Atheist?" a soft voice to my left asked.

  "More a skeptical agnostic," I answered Milo in a whisper. "I grew up in a strictly religious household, but it didn't stick with me after I left home."

  "Me, too," he said with a conspiratorial smile.

  "If everyone would take a few moments to write down a couple of questions you would like asked of any spirits who may visit us, that would be very helpful." Bettina passed out small squares of paper and tiny pencils. "Please don't sign your name to the questions. The spirits will know who asked what."

  I toyed with my pencil for a moment, debating whether I should pose questions that physicists have yet to answer, but decided it was hardly fair to expect anyone, even supposed spirits, to solve all the mysteries of the universe. I contented myself with asking a few simple questions instead, passing my paper along with everyone else's.

  Sarah leaned closer and whispered, "I hope you didn't embarrass me by asking something impossible to answer, like what the meaning of life is, or what Einstein's favorite color was, or what that gnu thing is."

  "Gnu?" I whispered back, confused. I'd never had any questions about cattle of any form, let alone exotic ones.

  "That theory thing you're always talking about."

  I stifled a giggle. "That would be GUT, the grand unification theory, but I've long since moved on to string theory—"

  "Excellent," Bettina said, shooting me a glance that indicated she'd love it if I shut up. "For our new friends who haven't been here before, I'll explain what will happen during this séance. First, everyone will place their fingertips upon the edge of the glass. We will clear our minds of the trivialities of everyday life, and focus on creating a welcoming environment for any spirit who wishes to join us."

  "Short of baking cookies and laying out a 'Welcome, Spirits' doormat, how are we supposed to do that?" I asked Sarah in a nearly inaudible voice.

  "Shh!"

  "Once a spirit has indicated that he or she is present, I will begin reading your questions. I ask that you be silent until the spirit has answered the question, at which point you may ask for clarification if needed, or if you have a follow-up. In order to keep the séance to a reasonable length, there will be only one additional question per person."

  Well, at least this was going to be fairly short, I thought to myself as I prepared to clear my mind of whatever trivialities were lurking there. "Begone, value of pi to ten decimal points," I murmured softly. "Shoo, velocity of the pion. Take a hike, plum pudding model of the atom."

  "Portia!"

  I composed my face into one of absolute innocence, and placed two fingertips on the circular walls of the glass. Bettina did a few moments of communing with who knew what, swaying slightly, her eyelids fluttering in a suitably dramatic fashion.

  "Spirits, entities, and loved ones who have passed on before us," she intoned, still doing the swaying and fluttering thing. "Heed our plea, and grace us now with your presence."

  Milo's arm brushed mine. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His lips were twitching. I fought hard to keep from grinning at him, and was mostly successful, but Sarah glared at me nonetheless.

  "We beseech you who have gone beyond the beyond—"

  I bit my lip hard, using the pain to distract me from the need to burst into unseemly laughter.

  "—share with us your knowledge and advice." Bettina took a couple of deep breaths, swayed forward, swayed backward, swayed forward again, then sat upright and opened her eyes. "Is there a spirit with us now?"

  Beneath my fingers, the glass moved slowly to a tile upon which had been printed the word YES in bright red letters. I wasn't surprised the glass moved, being tolerably familiar with the concepts of autosuggestion and self-delusion, although I had been content to simply rest my fingers on the glass and do no more. No doubt an overeager participant had nudged the glass across the table, possibly quite unaware that he or she was doing so.

  "Very good. Let us see what the spirits have to share with us tonight." Mystic Bettina pulled a piece of paper from the stack, and opened it. "Does the velocity of an object in space determine the force of the vacuum through which it travels?"

  Everyone looked at me. I cleared my throat and smiled. "It was the only thing I could think of offhand."

  Behind my arm, Sarah pinched me.

  Bettina gave me a stern look, and pulled another piece of paper from the pile. "I believe we will try a question a little less confusing. Here is one: is my brother James happy—"

  "Sorry we're late," a voice interrupted as the door to the séance room was opened. Sarah gave a startled yelp, and jumped in her chair.

  Silhouetted in the doorway were two shapes, the voice female. "Bloody badgers, it's dark in here. Tansy, find the switch, will you?"

  We all blinked as an overhead light suddenly flooded the room with light. Two middle-aged women, both with close-cropped, greying hair, stood smiling at us. One was very short and rather round; the other was tall and had a brusque manner about her that reminded me of the late British actress Dame Ma
rgaret Rutherford. The Dame Margaret woman peered nearsightedly around the room, her frown clearing when she spotted me. "There you are! Knew we'd run you to earth somewhere around town. All ready, are you? That your champion?"

  She looked at Milo, who appeared just as startled as the rest of us.

  "Um…no, this a gentleman named Milo."

  "Ah, it's the lady then? Excellent! Equality of the sexes and all that."

  I scooted my chair back and got to my feet, feeling it necessary to clear up a misunderstanding that evidently involved me. "I'm sorry, but I think you have the wrong person. I'm not expecting to meet anyone this evening."

  "Bloody badgers," Dame Margaret swore, turning to her companion. "Did we bollocks it up again?"

  "Excuse me, but this is a private session," Bettina said with a determined smile, rising from her seat. "If you wish to book one of your own, you can do so tomorrow between the hours of nine and—"

  "Where's the bloody card…I know I had it." Dame Margaret patted her navy jacket. "Had it when we left Court. Tansy, you pick it up?"

  "Oh, let me check." The smaller woman rustled around in a voluminous purse, extracting a small gold card. She had a grandmotherly look about her, with twinkling brown eyes, a little pink nose that twitched ever so slightly, and soft grey curls that bobbed as she fussed in her purse. "Yes, I do. Here it is. The name is Portia Harding. Such a pretty name, Portia. I had a cat named Portia, once. Do you remember it, Letty? She was orange and white, and had a nasty habit of piddling in my shoes, but otherwise was a very smart cat. I was devastated when she was trampled by a contingent of Cromwell's men."

  You could have cut the silence in the room with a mackerel.

  "Honest to Pete, I know the English are supposed to be eccentric, but this is just ludicrous," I whispered to Sarah.

  "They certainly are…different here," Sarah agreed, watching with interested eyes as the two women continued.