Undesirable

Chapter 25


That night I dreamt that Wally cheated on me. The details were fuzzy, the way they always are in dreams, but I remember barging in on Wally as he knelt naked next to the sunken couch, banging away at some other guy. I felt a wave of horror and regret and betrayal. Wally looked up at me, not even bothering to pause in his thrusts and said, "I got tired of waiting for you to get over your problems. I got needs, too. Not like you ever seem to notice."

I woke up with the bitterness of our break up tasting like bile in my mouth. A thousand excuses and counter attacks crowded my mind, but as I rolled over, I saw that Wally was still there, next to me, I realized that my dream wasn't real. Just nerves and insecurities finally breaking through the last frontier left to them. For a few minutes I watched him, little more than a suggestion of a person lit dimly by a strip of light that ran along the floorboards. I could see he was wrapped up in his sheet, his thick arm stretched out across his belly, his hand spread over a lump of coverlet. Totally innocent of all the horrible things I'd dreamed he'd done and said.

I rolled over and sat up, feeling for my pants and hefting them up, then wandered out to the living room. Flipping the lights on, I happened to glance up at a clock. To my shock, it was already past ten am. Without windows there was no clue that it wasn't still the middle of the night, and here half the morning had sped by without me noticing. I considered waking Wally and Chuck, but stopped. They probably needed the rest and I still needed to get my head together.

Wally's infidelity was just a dream, but I knew a wake-up call when I heard one. No matter how much I'd lost in the last two weeks, I could still fritter away more if I didn't get my ass in gear.

I was taking Wally for granted in a bad way. We'd come to a sex club and I'd refused to put out. And before that, I'd been pretty callous with his feelings, defending that chick, playing with the bracelets. And before even that, Wally had all but begged me for some support over the loss of his patron, and I'd just stood there like a jerk, thinking he was being a sentimental idiot. When was the last time I'd even asked him what he wanted? No, I'd just made all the decisions for both of us, expecting him to be happy, and he clearly wasn't. One of these days, if I kept this up, Wally was going to cut his losses.

I put my hand up to cover my eyes and felt terror crawl through my middle. I couldn't lose Wally. I just couldn't. He was my fucking rock. Without him there'd be nothing left. How could I be so damn stupid and complacent with him? Lowering my hand, I wiped my mouth and vowed that I'd do everything in my power to be less of an insensitive asshole.

But the nagging feeling didn't leave. I was forgetting something. Something big. Something that if I dared think of would come and hit me like a sledgehammer of guilt. And oh, god, I knew what it was. I'd been putting it off since the start of this whole awful adventure and it was more than overdue. After all, Wally wasn't the only loved one who I was neglecting.

With the stealth and skill of a spy, I fetched Wally's phone from his abandoned pants, then retreated from the bedroom leaving him still breathing soft and slow. In the locked bathroom, I fumbled with the smooth, black face of the Iphone, taking a few extra seconds to figure out how to turn the thing on. For a minute I stared at the menu, then took a deep breath and dialed a number from heart.

Two rings later my mother answered.

In a lot of ways, the call wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There wasn't any awkwardness about all the sex I'd been having, the subject didn't even come up. Nor did my mom blame me for waiting so long. She was just so damn relieved that I was alive and okay that she promised me any money or assistance I could ask for without hesitation. Anything I needed to be safe. Anything at all. And in a way, that was even worse.

Chuck and Wally woke up at nearly the same time – right about the point where the coffee began percolating into the carafe. Wally's response was to grab a mug from one of the cupboards and pour himself a cup. Chuck looked exhausted, but he waved the offer off, "I just don't like the taste," he explained. "Smells nice, though." He took a bottled water out of the fridge and slugged back about a quarter of it.

After wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Chuck was back to business. "Have the two of you decided where you want to go?"

Wally looked at me, deferring as usual. I looked back at him, remembering my vow. "I'm cool with what you want," I said.

Wally looked down at his cup for a moment, then said. "I want to go home."

Chuck nodded. "Portland Protectorate's a start." He heaved himself off the stool with a sigh. He gave his water bottle two more deep slugs then dumped the rest in the sink and tossed the empty into the trash. "I gotta go and make arrangements and plan our route. Why don't you order your breakfast. I'll grab something at the restaurant downstairs. I should be back by noon, and I mean that this time. It's not going to be like last night. Don't leave the room."

"Can't you do your arranging in here?" I complained, spinning around on my stool to watch him striding purposefully into his bedroom. "Why are you constantly running out on us, Chuck? You don't like us or something?"

"Ha!" Chuck exploded. He grabbed the doorframe and rolled his head back at us, grinning. "I like you guys a lot, but … secret organization, remember? The less you know about the way I work, the less that will be common knowledge among the vampires in two days. Kinda important to keep it that way."

His words struck me like a thunderclap of common sense. "My god, Chuck, should you be with us at all?" I asked, belatedly concerned. "I mean, you are the big cheese. Once we have a patron, they are going to know everything we know about you!"

"Oh, the vampires already know I exist." Chuck returned from his bedroom with a pair of shoes. "But they can't track me down without using human resources, and most don't consider it their job to try. And I'm not wholly unpopular, since I've earned a reputation for taking out the worst and most embarrassing of their kind. I think down deep they know I'm not really the enemy."

"You aren't?" Wally asked, dumbfounded. "Why aren't you?"

I mentally echoed him. Part of me was still holding out for some kind of late showing of strength in this Resistance, but the optimism was hard to keep up in the face of bland defeatist statements like this. Chuck's organization was sounding more and more thoroughly whipped.

"This isn't us or them," explained Chuck, with maybe the slightest trace of defensiveness. "Maybe, long ago it used to be, but not anymore. There will never be a successful counter coup, there's no point wasting time and resources planning for one."

"Well, not if we don't try –" I interjected angrily.

"--Not ever," Chuck said over me. "Most humans are too damn complacent and the vampires are too numerous and too powerful to be taken down by a small group. To even have a hope it has to be like the '82 coup – One strike, simultaneously, around the world. Anything less will simply unite the vampires and the human army would be obliterated."

"Oh don't give me that," I sneered. "They tolerate your piecemeal efforts fine –"

"Because I'm damn selective about who I take out!" I'd never heard Chuck shout before. It seemed to ring around the room in a way that just shut me the fuck up.

"Listen," said Chuck returning to his normal quiet, reasonable voice, "It took the vampires almost forty years to get their act together and set up their coup – and they had the real, imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon to motivate them. As crappy as your situation is, George, it's rare. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it unique. And you of all people, Mr. Former Undesirable, should know that life is pretty peachy for the vast majority of humanity. Trade is smoother than it's ever been in history, no wars creating artificial scarcities or destroying cropland or killing innocents. No matter how badly your life currently sucks, the situation isn't remotely like the one that vampires faced.

"It comes down to this: Humanity doesn't have the resources, they don't have the power, and they don't come close to having the motivation. There will be no counter-coup. Ever."

I was quiet for two beats. Wally concentrated on his coffee with that awkward posture that screamed hey, guys, leave me out of this. I took a deep breath.

"What's the point of this resistance?" I finally said. My guts ached. The coffee wasn't sitting well. I thought I might throw up. "Why bother with it at all. You've given it all up. Fuck, maybe I should go make my own resistance."

"You go do that," said Chuck, absolutely calmly.

"Fuck you!" I snarled back. He thought I was being childish. Fuck him. Fuck his calm reasoning. Fuck his pansy-assed job, sitting back pretty in a fucking sex club, playing rebel leader. Fuck it all. I was taking charge of my life, for fucks sake and how dare he imply that I was stupid for trying to do so.

"I mean it," said Chuck. "How many of the three million vampires can you take down by yourself? How many of your friends can you convince to join you on a suicide mission with no chance of accomplishing anything? You think with all your friends and all the guns in the world you might get two vampires? One? Or maybe, your whole operation will go down before you even have a chance to pull a trigger."

"At least I'll be trying."

"Yeah, so did a lot of others," said Chuck, and I heard a surprising amount of bitterness and regret in his voice, as if he took this as a personal failure that others had tried to fight the good fight. "People have tried your way, more times than I care to recount. I got there in time to watch a smug vampire presiding over a bunch of funerals. Thing is, George, those poor bastards had no idea what they were getting into, but you do. You know first hand what a vampire can do, don't deny it. Can you honestly say, in all those encounters, you never once tried to fight back? Do you honestly think that next time will be any different?"

I said nothing. The ease at which the vampires had taken control over my body was disgusting. Even with Abram, even with him distracted by Wally, my greatest victory had been a single lurching step. I hunched forward over the dregs of my coffee, feeling like the pith had been pulled from me and my balls had crawled back up into my body. It was all so goddamn hopeless.

"So, Wally, George, now it's us and them," Chuck continued as if our argument had never happened. "And I'm here to keep them from going too far, because someone damn well has to do that, and I can."

For a long minute no one said anything, then Chuck broke the silence with a tired sigh. "Let's get practical here a moment: while individually vampires are too damn lazy and self-involved to hunt me down, all of them working together on Project You sure as hell can – and will. So the sooner you two can settle on a vampire, the better. I'm begging you guys. Look through that database while I'm gone. Put some real thought into it, pick someone you think George can tolerate for a few weeks at least. Portland protectorate's a fair start, but I need a specific name sometime today."

He stood up and walked over to the door, then turned around and gave the first not nice grin I'd seen on him. "Unless, of course, you want me to choose for you."

"No, sir," I said quickly.

"Didn't think so." He stepped outside and shut us in, alone, with the damn laptop.



I might have been mistaken, but I thought Wally looked pretty excited by the prospect of looking through all those the names. He cast me one or two guilty glances, but then he dived into the project laid out for us with either a strict work code or, more likely, unbridled fascination. I could see why. After years of little information about our elusive overlords, here it was, all spelled out, paragraph after paragraph, page after page. Chuck's organization had not been lazy about collecting information, even if they had done all but nothing with it.

I, on the other hand, had a hard time concentrating on any of the bios. There were over a hundred vampires in Portland. Male, female, some younger looking, some younger in actuality – those two didn't correspond in any way. There were Wilderists and Eugenists and something called Solitarians – whatever the hell they were. Most were social, some weren't. Details, details, details. They all blurred together, jumbled into unmemorable nonsense.

None of it was what I needed to know. Will this vampire listen to me? I wondered. Or will he just mind-control me into complacency. Wally skipped to the next bio. This vampire was fond of hats, oh goody, who the fuck cares. Will she pimp me out to vampires I despise? Not a word on that. And that one there lavishes his harem with material goods, but will he sell me away to some vampire in the Sudan the moment he gets thin on cash?


Oh, God.

The moment I turned myself over to one of these vampires, I lost all control over my future. And I had all of today in which to choose who would screw me over the least.

"What do you think of this one," Wally asked.

I hadn't even seen "this one" even though I had been staring at the page for several minutes. He looked about thirtyish and ruggedly handsome. He could probably model outdoors wear. His hands looked large and the thought of them grabbing me filled me with a sudden shudder of terror. A woman might be less terrifying, I thought – but then I remembered Nadette and Darlene, both of whom had scared the ever-loving shit of me. At least this guy might be attractive to Wally… and that vision was just a little too close to my dream for comfort. I squashed down jealousy and reminded myself that vampires didn't count, and thank goodness, because then Wally would have much more reason to be angry on that score if they did.

There was a knocking at the door. Forty minutes after ordering it, breakfast had finally arrived. Relieved I dropped off the stool and went to the door to let the guy in. I never had felt more relieved at an interruption. When the food was eaten, I just couldn't bear going through any more bios.

"I trust you," I said to Wally while I gathered up our trays to put outside the door. "Pick someone you like."

"Oh, don't leave this all on me," groused Wally, taking up a perch on the barstool next to the computer once more. "What if I pick someone you can't stand and you want to run away again? I'm not going through this again."

"I won't," I assured him with as much sincerity as I could put in my voice. "Besides, it makes no real difference to me. I'll probably end up in bed with all of them at one point or another. Isn't that the way being White works?" I paced towards the couch with the intention of throwing myself petulantly down on it.

Wally stared at me for a moment then tightened his lips with a nod. "If I could change that I would."

I doubled back and put an arm around his shoulders and pressed my face into the back of his hair. "You are doing enough, Wally. More than I could ever ask." I felt him relaxing a bit.

"Sure the hell doesn't feel like it."

"Want to go back to the bedroom?" I suggested.

"I've got forty more vampires to go," said Wally, waving at the screen.

"We have until tonight to read about them. Come on."

"We don't have enough time," Wally countered. "Chuck'll be back any minute."

Wally was right, before we could have done much more than take our clothes off, Chuck was back, moving with a rushed franticness and an expression that suggested he if he slowed down, he'd pass out. "Grab all your things," he called as he breezed past us. "Use the toilet. We are out of here in two minutes."

Wally and I scrambled. I tossed our toothbrushes and such into the paper bag they'd come in and met up with Wally carrying all our clothes in the now grimy and muddy pillowcase. Chuck was already waiting for us at the door, computer briefcase under one arm and a small suitcase at his side. The club was very quiet as we exited. There were more employees cleaning the floors and wiping down the furniture than there were lonely looking guests milling about the huge echoing lobby. The lone man staffing the reception desk murmured a polite "come again soon," to us. Then we followed our footsteps from the night before back to the parking garage.

Chuck opened the trunk and pushed his luggage to the back, tossing our pillowcase on top of it. He tapped a blue cooler that took up the majority of the trunk space and said. "Drinks and food. I had the restaurant make them so it should be a bit better quality than what you got yesterday."

Closing the trunk, he walked around to the front of the car, reached into the front seat, and pulled a Rand McNally's 2007 Atlas from the door pocket. Laying it out on the hood, he pointed to a line in red sharpie that mostly followed freeways, but every so often took a perplexingly random detour through the countryside.

"This is very important," said Chuck. "You have to follow this route. As you can see it avoids most of the more populated protectorates. Rural protectorates have fewer police and more solitary natured vampires who presumably will be less interested in acquiring you. We'll be stopping for the night in Salt Lake City, which should be somewhat safe. The vampires there are so embroiled in a completely unrelated controversy; they haven't had time to pay attention to you. I've got ties to another club there where we can spend the night."

Chuck reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful cards, holding them all to out Wally. "Here's your ID's for the trip. Please try not to use them, and no," he said looking me level in the eye. "You can't keep them. They are only if you get pulled over, and please try not to do that. I don't care if traffic is doing 80 miles an hour, you stick to the speed limit."

Wally took the IDs and glanced down for a second, then handed me a Bloodtrust card and a driver's license, both with that 5 year old picture of me affixed to it. My name was now "Lance Burke." I noticed with unreasonable irritation that bloodtrust card had a yellow stripe across the top. "Yellow?" I inquired. "Why not Red or Black."

"Because you two don't look Red or Black. First rule of smuggling is not to rouse suspicion stupidly." Despite his mild, no nonsense tone, the insult came through loud and clear.

"We'll need permission to drive anywhere," I doggedly pointed out.

"You really think I didn't take care of that?" Chuck said it lightly enough but I could tell I was getting under his skin. Chuck was obviously not used to anyone questioning his abilities. Apparently, I'd touched a nerve in him. Good.

"Who's our Patron?" asked Wally.

Chuck tossed him a grin that only yesterday I thought was ingratiating; now I sensed a bit of smugness in the corners. "In honor of George's request, Chauncey Towers is your patron. Good choice by the way, he's probably the only vampire who won't notice his name being used."

Chuck reached in and put the car keys into the ignition and then stood up, stretched, and yawned broadly. "Guys, I was up all last night, I think I've had maybe three hours of sleep. If I drive, we will end up in a ditch. So, I'm going to take a nap in the back. You can arm wrestle for who drives first. Wake me up when we hit Rawlins. Or if anything bad happens."

With that he climbed into the back and pulled a light blanket up over his body. He fit himself so neatly it seemed to me that he'd probably done this before.

There was really nothing to do but to follow Chuck's suggestions. Much as it irked to be complacently going along with a guy who had let me down worse than anyone had ever done before, it wasn't as if I had a better idea, and I rather suspected our car didn't have permission to drive outside the red line that outlined our route. It made me feel caged in, as if all around the car were an invisible barrier and the freedom of the open road was mere illusion. I didn't like the feeling, but I wasn't stupid enough to tempt fate, either.

We stopped twice for gas, which Wally put on one of the cards Chuck had given him. We stopped a couple more times to fetch food and drinks from the back, and we hit just about every rest stop we came to, to stretch our legs. Despite that we were making good time. Traffic was almost non-existent and the scenery so monotonous that it took fortitude not to lead-foot the Prius up to 90 miles an hour. Through everything, Chuck slept like a dead thing in the back seat.

Though at first, out of respect, we kept our voices down and the radio off, gradually we just plain forgot about him back there. I actually jumped with shock when Chuck finally spoke up. "We at Rawlins yet?"

Wally glanced down at the map. "Uh, yeah, sure. Around there," he said. Then he exchanged a guilty glance at me. We'd passed Rawlins more than hour ago.

Chuck grunted and then I heard him yawn. "Ah, God, looks like we are halfway to nowhere." Though we were very high up (I could tell simply because of the way my lungs had to work, though Rand McNally confirmed it) there wasn't anything that resembled a mountain anywhere near us. The territory was nearly uniformly featureless. Off in the very, very far distance were some low dry hills, the ground between dotted with grey scrub and the tatty remains of the last snowfall.

"I sure hope you guys got gas," Chuck said worriedly, leaning between the two front seats to get a view of the gauge. "We could be more than a hundred miles from the next station and I doubt there is cell phone coverage."

"We're fine for gas," I assured him. Other needs might be a problem, depending on how pee shy Chuck was. But even that didn't seem to be an issue; once we'd cleared up the gas situation, he was happy to sit back in his seat and chat comfortably about whatever topics we brought up.

"So what's the problem with Salt Lake?" Wally asked. "Why is that place okay?"

"Oh… scandal," said Chuck. "Breeding, which, aside from you, is the hot issue of the day when it comes to vampires."

He went on to talk quite cheerfully about the Salt Lake situation. Apparently, the human population had surged in the last couple of years. So much so that one of the rarest and most desirable things had been made available: a break on the moratorium on reproduction. Out of some sort of egalitarian whim, Salt Lake City's Parliament had decided to forsake popularity and seniority and hold a lottery for the right to reproduce. More than half the local vampires had put their names into the barrel, but small procedural disputes delayed the actual drawing. Then it came out that one of the more popular and influential vampires was calling in all his chips and favors in order to rig the selection. And then everything exploded. After much argument, his name was withdrawn in punishment. At which point Lord Hiram had gone ballistic and fight had turned physical.

"Let me guess, he's already got a childe?" Wally asked.

"He had two in the making, the asshole." Chuck laughed at the apparent hubris. "One was obviously being made to help delay the completion of the other. That one was only six months along. She'll simply slip back into normal human life -- though she may live an extra decade or two as a consolation prize. She's already been sold out of state to keep the temptation away. The other is almost three years along, there's no way to stop the process – God help you get between a vampire and a childe that close to completion. Nor can Lord Hiram bear to draw it out much longer in unlikely hope that another break in the moratorium will open up in near future. No matter how the other Salt Lake vampires feel about the situation, short of killing Lord Hiram, that human's going to switch over. It's foregone."

This lead to a conversation of how Vampires were made, which fascinated both Wally and me. We'd known that blood was involved, but I'd been under the impression, perhaps because of Darlene, that it was a relatively simple matter of drinking enough vampire blood and presto.

"It's … " Chuck picked his words carefully. "I guess the best way to describe it would be, it's like a game. Or it starts out that way. First it's just a drop of blood exchanged. For a while that will satisfy, but the urge to make it two drops becomes overwhelming. Then three, then a mouthful. The longer the vampire can maintain self-control and keep the process going, the more gifted the childe will be at the end, so there is good reason to resist rushing it."

"Is it really that hard?" asked Wally. "Resisting rushing it."

"Not so much in the beginning, but later, yes, I hear the urge to force ones blood on the human becomes nearly unbearable. The itch has to be scratched." Chuck looked thoughtful. "At some point, the sire's willpower fails entirely, he keeps giving and taking until he's done a complete exchange. And then –" Chuck spread his hands, "It's over. The childe's biology switches over, and the Sire basks in the afterglow of a job well done. The urge to create more subsides for a decade or two and in the meantime he has a completely loyal underling to be his bonded and submissive companion. Which is nature's little way of keeping vampires from eating their young until they've learned enough survival skills to defend themselves.

"Anyway, it's been a quarter century since any of these vampires last bred so there are plenty who are pretty cock blocked about it. To say that Lord Hiram's situation has caused a civil war among the Salt Lake City vampires wouldn't be too far off. While the majority of vampires want to lynch him, Hiram's got eight of the most powerful vampires in the City on his side. When the whole thing is over, there might be openings for a dozen new childer. That prospect isn't exactly keeping the fighting down."

"Sounds dangerous," I said.

"Only if you are a Salt Lake Vampire. Aside from staff and harem, the populace hasn't even noticed. They've had the decency to keep their duels indoors."

Wally looked thoughtful. "Is three years normal? For making a childe, that is."

"High side of normal. Eighteen months to two and a half years is average. There's a story of a Chinese vampire back in the Xia dynasty who was fourteen years in the making, and ended up so insanely powerful that it took a hundred vampires to kill her, the nine who survived and gorged on her blood went on to be legendary Lords themselves. But that could be a folk tale. The longest gestation I know of was nine years two months for a vampire who still exists in England."

"Darlene said she was made in a week," said Wally. "That seems awfully short. Why would her Sire make her so quickly if he knew it would cripple her?"

"Because he didn't give a flying fuck about her." I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Chuck glowering. "Darlene's creation was a total perversion start to finish. Her Sire made her in a lab using an artificial method he devised himself. He mixed his own blood and that donated by his followers and simply doped and drained her using an IV. There was no intimacy, no emotional or physical bond at all. She was meant to be canon fodder. Not a cherished human, not a companion, just a thing. A one use only weapon. After the war, when she had the temerity to survive, her Sire abandoned her entirely. Disgusting. Horrific. I wish I could have rescued her –" Chuck's voice caught and then switched to a higher pitch "-- but there was no Resistance at that time," he finished in a rush.

At that Chuck lost interest in the subject. "Look, there's a place to pull over. I think it's my turn to drive." Since it was his car, I did precisely that.

Although I intended on climbing into the back at that point, Wally beat me there and I was left sitting shotgun, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable, considering the raw feelings left over from the fight earlier that day. To make it worse, Chuck turned out to be one of those guys who liked to look at you a lot while he talked, even when he was behind the wheel, and that made me nervous. Then there was the way he controlled the conversation: I still had a dozens of questions about breeding and Darlene, but I never could quite steer things back round to ask them. Every time I came close, somehow we careened into a new to topic. Eventually I gave up and went with the obvious flow. Despite feeling resentful, I found myself going on for some time about my previous jobs, my friends, my boss, my parents – my whole life laid bare. To a lesser extent, Wally did much the same. Chuck was a fantastic listener and never once gave the impression of being bored, which I guess is something, but I still had the impression that I was being "got" by the guy.

Sometime in all this, the sun set on us and we were cast into endless darkness. We were in the hills now, which appeared dim vague lumps on either side of us, visible only as being fractionally darker than the clear, star-filled sky beyond. It was unearthly and cold and I had the nightmarish sense that the world had closed about us and there was nothing out there. Gradually the stars faded, and the hills grew more visible as the sky glowed with the light pollution from a large city. I realized with relief that we were coming in out of the wilderness and into Salt Lake City.

"Hey, Chuck," said Wally, sitting in the backseat with the laptop lighting his face with an unearthly glow. "Um. What's a Solitarian?"

"Hmm?" Chuck swiveled in his seat to look over his shoulder, rather than looking in the mirror. I grabbed the seat and prayed the car wouldn't swerve but it didn't. "Solitarian? In the context of you choosing who to be your patron… a bad choice. I'd avoid one." He then looked back at the road, to my relief.

"Really?" Wally sounded disappointed. I remembered that the beefy, outdoorsy looking vampire with the big hands had been labeled a solitarian.

"I'd venture ninety percent of my business comes from Solitarians," said Chuck. "Abram is one. They have a 'King of my Castle' attitude. They say they don't believe in interfering with other vampires business, but what they really means that they don't want any other vampires mucking around in theirs. "

"Oh."

"Vampires tend to turn Solitarian as soon as they come across an etiquette they don't particularly feel like following," Chuck explained. "Unreasonable stinginess on the travel permissions. Taxing more than the suggested amount. Taking children as harem, or retaining harem past their fortieth birthday. That sort of thing. The harem one is the biggie. Last year I took down a vampire who kept a twelve year old."

"Sick bastard," I murmured.

"Yeah, forget this guy," said Wally snapping the lid of the notebook down.

"You are better off with either a Wilderist or Eugenist," said Chuck.

"Which is better?" Wally asked, sounding a bit tired.

"Neither," said Chuck. "But they are different. Wilderists are hunters –" Chuck then snorted as if that were funny. "At least in their own minds. In practice, they keep harems just like the rest, but they make pretenses of hunting. Their basic philosophy is that what worked for thousands of years when they were underground can still work now that they are the ruling elite. Humans take care of human business, vampires tend to their own."

"Sounds good to me," I put in.

"Not necessarily. Their philosophy really comes down to benign neglect," Chuck continued. "Which is to say the vast majority of them are lazy, selfish fuckers. Watch out for that. Some are rather stingy on the allowances that they give and they aren't necessarily less demanding of their harem in return. It's just that they seldom, if ever, bother with their non-harem charges. If you go the Wilderist route, look for one that is generous with his harem."

I nodded.

"Or you could go with a Eugenist. Think of them as farmers – and human kind as their crop. They take the idea of ruling very seriously. They seized on this whole Coup thing as an endorsement to remake the world into some vampiric Utopia. Healthy, happy humans, thriving vampires. Everything nicey-nice."

My stomach disagreed with that last statement.

"Thankfully," said Chuck with a laugh, "They haven't agreed what this utopia would actually look like and they spend most of their energy bickering amongst themselves. They are full of far reaching ideals, but kinda shy on actually implementing anything. They tend to micromanage their territories – and everyone else's."

"They sound terrible," I said.

"Actually, you'd be surprised," said Chuck, giving me a wide-eyed look. "Of all the vampire philosophies, they have the best record of not needing my intervention."

I humphed. Though, thanks to Chuck's intervention, the tasting didn't hold any horror to me, I still could remember feeling pretty damn abused at the time.

Noticing my expression, Chuck said, "I wouldn't recommend you choose Nadette – and oh what the hell is this?"

As we rounded a corner, a huge electronic road hazard sign filled the shoulder. It flashed out a warning to slow down and watch for congestion. Chuck eased on the breaks and complied, and sure enough, before we'd even reached the gate the traffic had stacked up and was slowly inching forward.

"Is this normal?" I asked.

"Not in my experience," said Chuck. "Maybe there's an accident."

We followed the flow, taking nearly twenty minutes to go about a mile. I could see the brightly lit scaffolding of Salt Lake City's gate. The wall wrapped like a curtain around the city proper, it's outside peppered with decades worth graffiti. As we approached the gate, I saw a line of cones moving us all into a single lane, and beyond that were floodlights.

Chuck hissed. "Put away the laptop," he said to Wally. "Put it in the pocket. And get out those bloodtrust cards I gave you guys."

"Isn't it an accident?"

"I don't think so," Chuck said.

"Maybe we should turn around," I suggested.

"They'll be on us immediately if we do that," said Chuck. "No, just be really cool. Think of something boring – like weather or food or something."

I tried to peer forward but the big trucks made it impossible to see beyond two or three cars ahead. "You think there might be a vampire?"

"God, I really, really hope not," said Chuck.

We inched, slowly but inevitably forward. I pretended that I was going to Salt Lake City to do a job, imagining how I'd run the seminar. By the time we reached the head of the line, I was down to considering how to fan out my display materials on the non-existent registration table. Then I became distracted with reality. Just inside the gate there were several police cruisers, cones and flashing signs. A police officer walked down the line of cars and shining his flashlight in on us. My hand tightened around the fake bloodtrust card and I tried really hard not to think of anything suspicious.

The officer seemed to be making a count. "ID," he asked Chuck.

Chuck held out a green striped Bloodtrust card and an Oregon driver's license for the man to inspect. The officer glanced at the cards, marked something down on a clipboard, then returned them.

"Have you been drinking tonight?" he asked.

"No officer," said Chuck, the model of calm.

"Move on," said the cop, stepping back and waiting for the next set of cars to move up.

And with that we followed our little column of cars and truck past the cones and got back up to speed. I held my breath until the flashing lights were well behind us, then let out a chuckle that was less to do with humor and more to do with the fact that I was no longer terrified. Chuck took us off the freeway onto surface streets the first chance he could.

"That should not have happened," he said.

"It was just a drunk trap," I replied.

"On a Wednesday night, right at the gate?" Chuck gave me a dubious look. "With that level of thoroughness? No, that was for you. We just got really lucky, there. If he'd pulled that taster he had on us, we'd have been in real trouble. Real trouble."

I hadn't noticed the officer carrying a taster, and he hadn't been the least bit interested in me or Wally, either. Part of me began to wonder if Chuck were simply making shit up, but I couldn't see the percentage for him in that. "I thought you said the Salt Lake Vampires were too busy to bother with me."

"I thought they were," said Chuck, tensely. "I was wrong. Obviously. In fact, I'm wondering…"

"Wondering what?" asked Wally.

"I'm wondering if someone snitched us out."

---

A/N: What the hell happened to my momentum? Ah well. I really had to fight to keep this chapter from becoming huge hunks of exposition. Especially the bit about vampiric reproduction, but even the fight between George and Chuck was initially way too wordy. I tightened it up quite a bit, ending up scrapping about 90 percent of the dream for sheer pacing's sake, but it still rather long on dialogue and short on action. Hopefully the next chapter will be different.

Elin: Yeah, Wally's a follower. Actually Wally's still smarting over the "lets go to Serenity, my patron will save us" fiasco. He was the one who actually got in contact with the resistance, so it's not like he's done nothing this whole time.

Kanilla Maxwell: Oh George is a huge prude, has been from the start. But then he probably wouldn't have been fighting so hard for his freedom if he weren't.

Onepennyshort: I'm a Portlander, too. Actually, Oregon City.

Kristina: I always try to wrap my stories up in a satisfying way. I really hope that this one won't be an exception (I do know how I'm ending it).

Lividfire: Yeah, I named all my characters pretty normal names, in part because I hate, hate, hate characters with names like Saffire Star Bedazzle, but also in part to emphasize that they are just normal people caught up in abnormal circumstances. Even George isn't the Chosen One with some huge destiny to fulfill -- he's just very good tasting and decidedly uncooperative.

Wayward: Sadly, normal would be boring. They'll get to be normal when the story is over. Thank you for what you say about Jeffrey. Yes, he's bored, callow, selfish, but definitely not all bad. I have ideas of what to do with him after this story is over as well. I refuse to believe that he left the Red Cross lady in emotional tatters. He may have simply wiped the experience from her mind, or softened it, or made her even see the humor in it, but he's not so black hearted that he'd leave her hurt.

Azalea: Where George ends up is the climax of the story, so I can't give you any hints which vampire it will be with, or even if it will be with a vampire.

Womo: Chauncey is the one vampire who has consistently ignored George, though to expect him to continue to do so might be a bit much.

Thank you all so much for your encouragement and nice reviews. I'm really so happy you like this story.