Rule of Vampire

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Terrill has been found,” Hargraves intoned as if it was gospel. He had the appearance of a 10-year-old boy, and it was always slightly humorous that he was so serious. “Horsham is dead.”

Fitzsimmons met this news with a kind of glee. Council meetings had been entirely too tame and routine lately, as far as he was concerned. They were meeting in an old, staid financial firm in London, but it was still a far more modern meeting place than the drafty castles they’d been meeting in for most of their history, much less the bare caves of their first meetings. As far as Fitzsimmons was concerned, this was the first bit of interesting news to be brought for their review in what seemed like centuries.

He was about to say “Good!” when Southern beat him to it. Southern could always be counted on to react first, without thinking. He was a tall, aristocratic man who had added gray streaks to his beard and hair, though his face and hands were without blemish. He was one of the richest men in England and in the news often, so he’d taken the trouble to create the façade that he was aging like a normal human

Fitzsimmons preferred to stay in the shadows. He looked ordinary in every way: brown hair, slightly overweight, medium height, a forgettable face. It wasn’t by accident. He’d cultivated that look for millennia.

“That’s good news,” Southern said. “Horsham dead and Terrill found. I presume the two items are related?”

Everyone knew that Horsham had hated Terrill and had been searching for him for years to exact revenge.

“It appears so,” Hargraves said.

“Then Terrill did us a favor,” Fitzsimmons said. “We were going to have to take care of Horsham one of these days anyway. He was culling the humans a little too vigorously for our safety.”

“Yet,” interjected Peterson, ever the legal scholar. He was the rare vampire who had been bitten when he was an old man, and he’d never totally lost his fussy-old-man ways. “Horsham wasn’t doing anything illegal.”

Fitzsimmons turned to his colleague and raised his eyebrows slightly, as if to say, When has that ever stopped us from doing what is necessary?

There was barely a quorum for this meeting: five members out of the ten total. Even that many attendees was rare these days. Yes, it had been entirely too boring for entirely too long.

But a quorum is a quorum, Fitzsimmons thought, and that means decisions can be made.

“I vote that we approach Terrill for membership in the Council,” he said. “I believe Partridge has wanted out for some time now. In fact, I can’t remember the last time he attended a meeting.”

“Terrill won’t come,” Susan Clarkson said. The four male vampires turned toward her, surprised she had spoken. It was ever so enlightened of them to have voted in a female vampire, but they didn’t really expect her to contribute.

“And why is that?” Fitzsimmons asked, though he already knew. Better it comes from her, he thought.

“Terrill refuses to feed on humans,” she said. Her face was blank and it was hard to get a read on what she thought of this remarkable fact. She was a Nordic blonde, classically good-looking, but she was so cold that her looks could only be admired from a distance.

“How very odd,” Hargraves intoned, and the rest of them laughed.

“Nevertheless,” Fitzsimmons said, “he is among the oldest of us, and we could perhaps benefit from an alternative viewpoint.”

“Is it true that Michael was his Maker?” Peterson asked. Though he appeared older than the rest of them, he was barely more than a baby vampire himself. He’d been voted onto the Council because he was so much more conversant with modern ways than the rest of them.

“So it’s said,” Fitzsimmons answered. Hogwash, he thought. Michael is a myth. “If so, imagine how wise his advice will be.”

“What? That we should become cow lickers?” Southern scoffed. “I’d rather you drove me out into the middle of the desert and left me there to burn. Nevertheless, I second the motion. We need some new blood, so to speak. All those in favor?”

All of them raised their hands but Peterson, which was more or less meaningless because he pretty much voted against everything, for reasons no one could discern.

“What if he won’t come?” Clarkson asked.

“I move that we appoint Clarkson to bring him back, by any means necessary,” Fitzsimmons quickly followed up. Good for her. She was following his instructions exactly, though she wouldn’t be expecting this last bit of inspiration.

“Wait,” she began to object, but it was already too late. The others were raising their hands, even Peterson, and she fell silent. For once, her countenance took on some emotion as she shot Fitzsimmons a poisonous look.

“Terrill must learn that he is one of us,” Hargraves said. “He has been free too long.”

They all nodded in agreement, and again Fitzsimmons felt a moment of giddiness.

This was going to be fun.

“Shall we eat?” Hargraves asked.

Though they were meeting in an office of a reputable bank, it was a back room where few, if any, employees ever wandered. If they had, they would have seen an odd table in the middle of the room, with a concave surface, narrowing at one end, where there was a drainage hole. A medical student might have recognized it as an autopsy table, if he was observant enough to look past the polished oak and the carvings of what appeared to be gargoyles on the thick legs.

At the center of the concave depression, there was a bundled-up object that occasionally, throughout the meeting, had twitched. Now Hargraves removed the covering to reveal the vampire beneath, naked, her mouth covered with duct tape, her hands and feet bound. She was short and blonde, and a little chubby. Fitzsimmons was pretty sure he’d seen her around the offices.

“What did she do?” he asked idly.

Peterson picked up the mallet and the wooden stake in front of him and said, “Rule number one, I think. Consorting with a human.” It really didn’t matter. The Rules were just an excuse, and most everyone knew it. Certainly no one on the Council had any illusions.

Peterson shrugged and put the point of the stake over the captive vampire’s heart. She was screaming at the top of her lungs through the gag, but they’d gotten so good at this that it came out as no more than a loud hum.

Peterson brought the mallet down without fanfare. The stake had been sharpened so that it slid easily between the vampire’s ribs and into her heart. The Council members watched as the life went out of her eyes. Blue blood welled up around the wooden stake and started to drain away.

They leaned over and sank their fangs into her soft body, tearing away mouthfuls of her flesh. Their faces took on a blue glow as the vampire blood covered them. Human blood was great, but vampire blood was addicting.

In the back of Fitzsimmons’s mind, he knew that they had gone over the edge, that vampires were intent on consuming each other. The Rules of Vampire—which had been created by Terrill to save their kind—were instead going to be their downfall.