Chapter 8: New Friends

January, 1994

The boys walked into the room and stopped dead, mouths gaping in shock. "Bloody fucking hell, Alice!" John said with his English accent sounding much harsher than his usually mellow voice, Edgar still trying to get sound out of his vocal apparatus. I was forced to use the panic button because I didn't know how else to get help without leaving the room of gore unguarded.

I snapped a finger under Edgar's nose, startling him. "The guy is unconscious. I need you two to find him a room where he can sleep it off. A closet or a bathtub will do. Take him to the bathroom and clean him up first. Most of the blood is hers, but some of it is his. Before you start feeling sorry for either of them or the girl on the bed, he was going to rape the girl and they had set him up for it, intending to kill him and, eventually Mariko.

"So, get him cleaned up and stored elsewhere. After you do that, John, I want you to go find Mariko. Find one of the high-priced bottle blondes downstairs and have her tell you where she is. When you find her, bring her here," I told him slowly just to be sure his mind would catch it all. He was looking a little shocky to me. I turned to Edgar, who finally had his shit together, and smiled apologetically. "I owe you an apology, Edgar. I guess this was a bad idea. But you might want to think about what would have happened to Mariko if I had not come, though. Anyway, when you boys are done with Roger here, I need you to find me a phone. I am sure a house this big has a dozen of them. This room, however, doesn't seem to. I need to call Brothers Tyrone and Jerome. They will have people who can help clean this mess up."

Edgar snorted, shaking his head doubtfully. "This is a right big fucking mess, Alice. I doubt anyone can clean it up without someone downstairs knowing about it."

Sighing, I flapped my hands at them in a shooing motion. "Just do it, please? Otherwise my uncle and the Ambassador are going to be talking us out of being arrested for about a dozen charges, including murder."

While the boys hefted Roger and dragged him off to the bathroom, I cut the cords to the frilly pink curtains and bound Lily on the bed. I tried to limit the power behind my punch but she was still going to be out for a while. I then fished the severed head out from under the bed. Remembering the magically disappeared corpses in Belfast, I realized if we could keep everyone out of this room until dawn, the sun would take care of my problem for me.

Except Lily. Oh, and all the blood from Roger's wrecked face.

Ten minutes after the boys left there was a knock on the door, which I locked behind them, and a hoarsely whispered, "It's John and Mariko, Alice. Let us in, quickly!"

I cracked the door before stepping aside. John slithered in but Mariko came to a dead stop in the middle of the doorway, forcing me to grab her arm and pull her inside, slamming the door just before a couple of giggling drunks meandered past.

"Holy shit, girl! What the hell happened?" she looked at me with wide, scared eyes.

I smiled grimly. "I was hoping you would know," I said sarcastically. I walked over to the severed head and lifted it up by the hair to show her its grimacing face. "Does she look familiar to you?"

Mariko swallowed and shook her head. "Not really."

"How about the girl on the bed? No? Well, they both seemed to know you, only they called you the Moon's Shadow. Care to comment?" I inquired bitingly, my eyes boring into her.

Something, I am not sure what but something, moved behind her eyes and she turned a guardedly hesitant expression on me. "Um, you remember when I said I used to help the shaman? Weeeell, there was a little more to it than that. On our reservation, the shaman has duties the round eyes wouldn't understand, or even believe if they did understand. I turned out to have a knack for both that and healing. So I was trained for both. Why do I have the feeling you know exactly what I am talking about?" She was studying my face intently, ignoring the dead, bleeding head I was holding up.

I dropped the head back down next to its former body with a juicy splat and reclaimed the short sword from the bed. Closing my eyes and brushing my hair up, I carefully slid the blade home in its sheath with a faint click. When I opened my eyes, Mariko's wide eyes had narrowed, raking over my body.

"What else are you carrying?"

"None of your damn business. What is your business is why this Vampire was here to kill you?" I snapped back. I was losing my temper. I thought I had found a nice (if prickly), normal friend that would show me what being a normal college kid was about. Instead, what I really found was someone who looked to be almost as fucked up as I was. Nothing normal to see here; move along, just us freaks at work. "It also happens to be my business. I need to know what you have been up to to attract this kind of attention. Roger, the hulking Neanderthal you talked to when we first got here, is currently sleeping off the ass-kicking I gave him for trying to rape Sleeping Beauty over there. What I didn't know before I beat him unconscious was that she was the honey to set the trap. A trap, incidentally, meant for you. So, who are you and why are there monsters lurking about to kill you?"

I saw the thought flicker behind her eyes. Just lie. She can't possibly know all she thinks she knows. Then those very same eyes ran over my blood spattered form once more, trying to find the locations of any weapons I might be carrying other than the short sword.

"Who are you?" she asked a little breathlessly, wonder in her tone. She swallowed audibly and nodded to the twice-dead corpse. "I have taken babies, but my Grandfather told me never even think about going after grown up blood-suckers by myself. They are too strong and too fast. It looks like you just walked up to her and killed her, as if she didn't even try to stop you."

"Stop answering my questions with questions of your own, damn it! This is rather serious and I need to know how far into this I can trust you. Otherwise, you get to sleep beside Sleeping Beauty over there until everything is cleaned up."

Before she could answer, there was a firm knock on the door followed by a hoarse, "Edgar." John opened the door and his partner walked in with a cordless phone in his hand. "The rest of the phones in this house are wired and in rooms with no privacy. Found this in the study/library."

I took the proffered phone and looked pointedly at Mariko. "Well?"

She growled irritably. "I told you, I am a shaman-in-training. I am only here to get my medical degree and then I am back to the reservation."

"Why would they care enough about you to go to this much trouble?"

She shrugged. "Um, could be that I practice on the local scum at night."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "What, you go trolling through graveyards or something?"

She snorted derisively. "Of course not! I simply walk around campus to make sure things are quiet. If they are I go back to the dorms and go to bed," she explained nonchalantly. Then her eyes hardened. "More often than I like, I do run into trouble and I handle it."

"How?"

"I either chase it off campus or thrash it, depending on how fast it is," she retorted.

"Any Vampires?"

She shook her head with rising ire. "No! I told you, my Grandfather told me to leave them alone until I finish my training."

"So, Obi-Wan hasn't knighted you yet," I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes. "He tell you about anyone else who does what you two do?"

She smirked somewhat bitterly. "What, you mean fight fairy tales? He mentioned some others, but he wouldn't give me details other than to say there were people out there besides the Sioux who still believed in the Boogeyman. People who, like us, fight against the evil in the darkness."

"Not always in the darkness unfortunately," I said as I extended the phone's antenna, clicked it on, and dialed the number I memorized. St. Matthew's apparently was well-enough off to afford a receptionist twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. "Brother Jerome or Brother Tyrone, please."

"May I ask who is calling?" the young male voice asked politely enough, though there was a frown in that voice. It was almost as if he disapproved of people calling this late or he could hear the music and rowdiness in the background noise despite the closed door.

"Please tell him that it is Alice Spencer-Killdare."

"One moment."

Musak began playing a selection of classical pieces written for the Church, starting with Bach. The second piece was winding down when a winded voice came on the line. "Dame Alice? It is an honor to finally speak to you. I am sorry I missed you the other day, though I understand Brother Tyrone was able to help you with your problem."

The voice was smooth, cultured, and utterly devoid of accent. There was no indication of age, race, or origin in that voice. "Yes, he was. Unfortunately, I find myself in a quandary. Would you happen to know the name Mariko Moonshadow or," I turned to Mariko and asked her Grandfather's name, "Thomas Moonshadow? From the Sioux reservation."

He laughed. "Alice, you say the Sioux Reservation like there is only one. Rest easy, though. If you are mixed up with something Mariko Moonshadow is involved in, she comes from good people. Her Grandfather helps keep some of the lesser monsters out west under control and I have heard he was training her as his replacement."

"So can I trust her with your secrets?"

A long pause before a shuddering breath, then a sharp, biting laugh. "You weren't calling to set up a meeting with me, were you? You are calling because you have something that needs cleaning."

"Bright boy. I am at the Psi Beta Phi House off-campus somewhere between George Washington University and Georgetown University and I am staring down at the headless corpse of a Vampire. I am blood-spattered and I have a sixteen year old girl tied up that I need to get over to the warehouse that Tascha runs," I told him in a monotone.

The swallow was audible. "I would say you were kidding, but I have been in contact with Karl Waldensee and he assures me that you have no sense of humor about such things. I will call the cleaners and warn Tascha to have the warehouse prepped. Is there anything else I need to know before I go?"

I laughed a little hysterically before getting it under control. "Oh yeah! I am in the middle of a drunken sorority party, so make sure the cleaners can blend in with 18-23 year olds out to get sloshed and shagged. I am on the second floor, fourth door on the right if you come up the main stairway."

"Oh, um, right. Party-wear on the cleaners and nobody over the age of twenty-five," he replied hesitantly. "Are you sure you are only going to be here for a semester, Dame Alice? I may need to put in for some extra help if you are here longer."

"Funny," I snapped. "Just hurry. I don't know how long I can contain the scene."

He was chuckling mordantly. Why did the males in my life find me so funny?

It seemed an endless wait, but was probably only about forty-five minutes to an hour before there was a knock on the door and Jerome's voice muttered, "Dame Alice, it is Brother Jerome."

I cracked the door before opening it to the four figures standing in the darkened hall. Two were males wearing jeans and t-shirts that showed off built physiques and two were white females dressed in tight blouses and painted-on pants that left little to the imagination. Both young women were gorgeous with perfectly applied make-up and styled hair. The male in the lead of the group was older, probably near thirty but looking younger with a shaved head, skin dark enough that I wasn't sure of his ethnicity, and gray eyes that were almost eerie. He was handsome in a rugged, unfinished sort of way. The other male was young enough to easily fit in downstairs with a blonde skater's cut, boyish good looks, and a body built for football. Real football, not American football.

They all entered the room and stopped dead, like Mariko. I grabbed who I was assuming was Jerome and waved the rest of them hurriedly into the room, shutting the door before anyone could wander upstairs. It was getting crowded despite the nice size of all of the bedrooms in the sorority's house.

They looked around with wide eyes. The blood pooled on the floor, spatters of it everywhere. The young blonde girl on the bed tied up and gagged, with eyes staring daggers at me even as tears trailed down her face. Edgar and John, wearing nice black suits, watched them with amused expressions.

"Uh, uh, Dame Alice?" the older gentleman said with Jerome's voice, those eerie eyes flicking to me in my borrowed, blood-spattered outfit before going back to the headless corpse. "W-what happened here? Who is the dead girl and what is with the girl on the bed?"

Edgar covered his mouth and coughed but I saw the shininess of his eyes and John simply turned to look out the window. I sighed and rolled my eyes. "As I mentioned on the phone, headless Vampire, girl helping headless Vampire," I repeated more simply, gesturing to each in turn. "We need to get headless Vampire out of here, clean up blood, and get girl to warehouse. Understand? I am speaking the Queen's English, yes? They haven't changed the official language of the United States to Swahili, have they?"

The two young women were glaring at me but the other guy was smiling with eyes just as shiny as Edgar's. They looked at each other and the laughter erupted into full belly laughs neither man could stop. I heard laughter behind me as well and turned to find John leaning against the window, shoulders shaking with merriment.

Jerome flushed and looked at me apologetically. "Sorry, Dame Alice. We are usually better than this, I promise, but we don't often do this sort of thing for others. We are usually the ones taking care of the vermin and it doesn't usually happen in the middle of a frat party," he explained contritely. He looked over his shoulder at his people and blushed a little darker. "I forgot my manners. This is David. He is a student at GWU in forensic science. The blonde girl is Helena and the brunette is Jasmine. Both are members of the regular clean-up crew the Order has stationed here in Washington. According to them, if it were closer to morning than it is, we would just leave the body and open the window shade to let the sun do the work for us. As it is, we can't afford to spend the next nine hours or so guarding the scene. So we will clean up as best we can and leave the rest for the sun. We have a fifth member of the crew out back. We will wrap her up and lower her down to him and he will take her to the van we have waiting. Did you or anyone else bleed anywhere in the room?"

I snorted. "Roger, the football player I knocked unconscious, bled all over where the Vampire corpse is lying. He is currently in the bath tub across the hall."

Helena opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again to ask, "Um, you mean you beat a football player unconscious and then killed the Vampire? By yourself?"

She had an accent but I couldn't place it. Someplace not American. I was thinking northern Europe, given her coloring. And she looked surprised, which meant Jerome either didn't tell her about me or he didn't know himself, which seemed unlikely if he was talking to Karl. Jasmine looked just as shocked at what I had said and her tanned complexion paled a little as her dark eyes widened.

I shrugged. "Don't feel sorry for him. He was going to rape the girl on the bed," I replied, purposefully misconstruing the question. "And she was the honey for the Vampire's trap meant to catch Mariko here. Bad luck for them I blundered into the trap instead."

Helena looked like she wanted to rephrase the question to get the answer she wanted but thought better of it when she saw the flat look in my eyes. She and Jasmine pulled backpacks off their shoulders and began pulling cleaning products out with cloths and plastic bags. While the ladies did that, David and Jerome pulled bags off of their own backs and pulled out tarp and saran wrap and duct tape to wrap up the Vampire. They quickly had her trussed and, with Edgar and John as lookouts, they hustled the corpse across the hall to a bedroom occupied by passed out co-eds. They quickly opened the window and lowered the body down to drop into the massively muscled arms of a black man built along Incredible Hulk dimensions. He would have made Roger look small and weak by comparison. I was told his name was Herbert. Herbert easily tossed the body over his shoulder and disappeared in the gloom of the back yard.