Chapter 17

November Twenty-third

Arthur stood musing on the back porch of his new residence, his hands clasped behind his back. He briefly searched the night sky for the stars that had become a permanent feature of his life, but the lights from the nearby city of Ashburn, Virginia blotted out all but the brightest.

It had taken two nights of driving around through the suburbs of Washington, searching the minds of residents and travelers, to find this place. Other than the lingering odor of Ben Gay and the sharp, ammonia reek of cat piss, it was perfect. The elderly couple who had formerly made the old farmhouse their home had no surviving relatives. Their few living friends resided in nursing homes, some here but most in Florida. Best of all, they had substantial financial resources, and money, for the first time in centuries, was in short supply. He had his accountants working on tracking down the funds that had been stolen from his accounts, but he had little hope that the efforts would bear fruit.

He had made Colonel Woodard give the Gift to the wife, Dorothy. The husband, after providing Dorothy with the first meal of her new life, had been made a permanent resident of the dirt beneath the snow covered garden. Arthur had thoughtfully added the couple's many cats to the unmarked grave to keep him company. Dorothy, an uncommonly homely woman even with her youth restored, had whined nonstop, more about the cats than her spouse, until Arthur had asked Woodard to command her to be silent.

Her eyes still glared at him in quiet judgment each time she was near, a habit that Arthur found particularly annoying. When her usefulness came to an end in roughly a month, he would take great pleasure in tearing the heart from her chest. Until then, they needed her to answer the few telephone calls that the couple received in order to keep any suspicion from falling on this place.

The enlisted soldiers that he had brought with him had obtained their own place within the city proper. They had already given the Gift to three night duty police officers and two Vietnam vets who had been holding a vigil at the war memorial. The vets had been sent off to Charlotte, North Carolina to start the process there. The police officers were being kept busy stealing duty rosters, personnel records, and evidence room inventory sheets.

Things were going equally well, and in most cases better, in the other cities. Nearly all of his initial soldiers had sent pairs of their own fledglings to their secondary and tertiary targets and also commanded an additional fifteen to thirty vampires in their own city. As of this evening, he had minions in forty seven cities across North America.

So far, the only setback had been the death of both fledglings who had been sent to Pittsburgh by the Harrisburg team. There was no mention in the news of anything that could explain their demise. It was a worrisome quandary. He would like to dispatch another pair to the city, but, if the authorities were responsible for the loss, doing so would risk alerting the country to the danger it was in well before he was ready.

A small sound behind him reminded Arthur of Susan's presence. He turned to regard the naked woman who was crouched on all fours upon the rough wooden planks of the porch.

"You have my apologies, Susan, for having had so little time to spend with you," he said finally, "but I did pick you up a little something in New Orleans to help make up for the lack of attention. Why don't you scurry along inside and get the bag that I left on one of the end tables in the living room. Oh, and on your way back, grab the jar of minced garlic I saw in the icebox."

Susan began to rise to do his bidding.

"No. No," he corrected her. "There is no reason to stand. You can perform the tasks you have been given perfectly well on your hands and knees."

When she crawled back out to the porch, a bag clasped in her teeth and a jar held carefully in one hand, he sat on the porch swing and commanded her to kneel in front of him. He upended the bag, causing a large variety of hoop earrings to clatter onto the seat next to him. Pulling a pair of gloves from his suit pocket, he picked up one of the smaller rings and dipped it into the garlic.

"Hold still," he directed as he pushed the dull point of the clasp through one of her brown, fleshy nipples.

The next pair went into the skin halfway down her rib cage. After that, he started slightly below her ribs and placed one of the heavy rings every inch down each side of the smooth, muscular flanks of her abdomen. Blood ran in thin trickles from the points at which the rings pierced her skin, and the touch of the garlic caused angry red blisters to bubble upwards. Throughout it all, she knelt trembling, with tears rolling down her cheeks and her mouth open in a silent scream. Finally, all that remained of the pile of cheap jewelry was a thick rod with balls on each end.

"Stick out your tongue," he said mildly as he unscrewed one of the ends and dipped it in garlic.

"This is fun!" Arthur exclaimed gleefully as he impaled the thick muscle of her tongue with the blunt rod. "I can see why you so enjoyed probing me with your needles and scalpels. I really must get more of these the next time I'm near a mall."

He leaned forward to stare intently into her watering eyes. "Why, it almost looks like you have something to say," he said mockingly. "While I'm sure it would be eloquent and insightful, I have a much better use in mind for your mouth."

After making her rinse to purge her mouth of garlic, he opened the front of his pants and pulled out his already stiff member.

"You know what I want. Get to it," he directed.

Susan obediently leaned forward to take him between her lips. As she gently sucked on the fat head of his cock, he could hear the sound of her blood dripping from the dangling rings to the porch floor.

"The tongue piercing certainly adds something to the experience," Arthur said approvingly, "Or perhaps it's the blisters. I suppose to be certain, we'll just have to keep both from now on."

Susan's head was still bobbing several minutes later when Woodard emerged from the house.

"Uh, sir?" he said to draw attention to his presence.

"Good evening, Woodard," Arthur answered with a wave toward Susan's hindquarters. "There are several orifices going unused if you would care to indulge."

"No thank you, sir," Woodard replied disapprovingly. "You asked me to remind you of your appointment."

"Is it that time already? Thank you, Woodard. I will require your services as a driver."

Tucking his cock back inside his pants, Arthur rose and, with Woodard following behind, began to walk to the dilapidated barn that the couple had used for a garage.

After only a few steps, he called over his shoulder, "Come, Susan."

As she must, Susan obeyed silently, but her eyes and expression spoke volumes on the subject of despair.

The barn turned garage contained a rusted old pick up truck and a lovingly maintained baby blue Lincoln Continental Mark IV. Choosing the latter vehicle, Arthur and Susan seated themselves in the back while Woodard took the driver's seat. As they rolled down the driveway, Arthur had Susan resume her earlier activities while he made calls to the teams in the most recent cities to be covertly invaded.

With traffic, it took more than an hour before the car pulled to a stop just outside the campus of Georgetown University. Silently, Woodard pointed out the tavern that was the agreed upon place for Arthur's meeting. With a nod of thanks, Arthur left his fledglings behind.

The bar did an admirable job of creating what was thought of as old world charm, from the deeply polished oak bar to the brass beer taps to the stone fireplace with its fake, gas fired logs. A shallow scan of the patrons' minds revealed that the place was a haven for local academicians. After a brief search, he located the bearded and bespectacled professor he had come to meet, sipping a Guinness and playing darts.

Arthur approached the man and extended a hand. "Professor Andrew VanHauss? My name is Arthur. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

The professor gave Arthur's hand a brief, limp shake. "Andy, please. Pleasure to meet you, Arty. What can I do for you?"

The muscles in Arthur's jaw clenched briefly in annoyance at the casual form of address, but his voice remained pleasant. "I am very interested in ancient Sumerian writings."

"Are you a collector?" Andy asked suspiciously.

"No, not at all. My interest is purely academic. I am considering writing a book that involves ancient writings and want to get the details right, but I'm afraid I know next to nothing on the subject," Arthur lied, picking the cover story based on what Andy's memories said about his character.

Andy relaxed and, after taking a drag from a cigarette, said, "I'm always happy to help an aspiring author. Just to give you the bare basics, Sumerian writing was known as cuneiform and, in various forms, was in use from roughly 3400 B.C. until it was replaced by the Roman alphabet in the first century. What do you want to know in particular?"