F Wilson - Midnight Mass

"What's the secret, Artemis? Why did those guards die when we staked the woman?"

"They were her get," he gasped. "When she died, all her get died, not just her guards."

"What's 'get'?" Lacey said.

Artemis sneered. "People she turned. When Olivia died, all of her get, no matter where they were in the world, died with her."

Joe knelt there, stunned. "I don't believe you."

"Believe it, priest. It's the one thing we don't want the living to know about us."

"But you're telling me."

His smile was sickly. "What do I care? It won't matter to me, will it."

"You're telling me that anyone, anywhere, that she turned at anytime since she became undead, is now dead?"

"Yes. That's the big secret. That's why Olivia's guards did everything to protect their get-mother. Not for her sake. For their own."

Lacey squatted on the opposite side. "But that means that somewhere there's a vampire who's the ultimate source of this whole undead plague. If someone could get to him—"

Artemis was shaking his head. "No, cow. There may have been a single Prime millennia ago, but now there are many. We undead aren't immortal; it only seems that way. We age and die, but we last many centuries. Eventually rot catches up to everything, including us. It hits suddenly and over the course of a week or so we crumble to dust. But this kind of true death does not affect the get. In fact it enhances them. Only premature death kills one's get. Because we lived solitary existences for so long, we never knew about get-death. But when an ancient Prime figured it out, and started the practice of protecting getfathers, our numbers began to grow."

"Is Franco a Prime?" Joe asked.

Artemis nodded. "And my get-father." His eye narrowed. "You want him, don't you."

"Oh, yeah. If he goes, how many go with him?"

"Many. I can't give you a definite number, but every Nosferatu in the Empire State Building is his get. Not in the city, however. We've learned to mix gets within a region to avoid catastrophe. I hope you get him."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to come down here, but he made me. He hasn't treated me right since a certain unfortunate accident, and now, because of him, I'm done. Aren't I?" He shifted his gaze to Lacey and Carole. "You wouldn't consider . . . ?"

"Not a chance," Lacey said.

Joe held out his hand. "Carole?"

"Not a stake!" Artemis whined. "I don't want to be staked!"

Lacey made a face. "You rather be thrown out in the sun?"

"No! That's even worse! Look, can't you let me go? I've helped you. I've told you a valuable secret. I—"

Joe shook his head, as much to clear a creeping fog as to emphasize that survival was not one of Artemis's options. "We'll give you a choice: sun or stake. That's all you've got."

"There's another way," Carole said.

Joe looked up and saw her fishing something that looked like a candle out of the front of her sweatshirt. He seemed to be viewing her through a mist. The waxy stick had wires attached. She bent and placed it under Artemis's neck, then draped a wire over each of his shoulders.

"This is a high explosive," she said. "You won't feel a thing."

High explosive? Had she wired herself to explode? He wanted to ask but the words wouldn't come.

"Just take the two wires ..." Carole was saying.

He watched Artemis reach up and take a wire in each hand.

"... and touch them—"

"Fuck you all!" Artemis cried as he jammed the two wires together.

Joe managed to raise a leaden arm across his eyes and fall back—

—but nothing happened.

Carole looked down at Artemis, her expression a mask of dismay.

"You didn't let me finish." She held up a battery. "You touch the wires to opposite ends of this." She shook her head. "Your kind simply don't understand mercy or compassion, do you."

"Damn right they don't," Lacey said.

Joe saw that she held the maul and a stake in her hands. Before Artemis could react, she jabbed the point over his heart and slammed it home with two quick, hard strikes.

The vampire arched his back, shuddered, then crumpled.

Lacey pulled the explosive stick from behind Artemis's neck and handed it back to Carole. "They don't deserve a break. Any of them."

Joe was still half sitting, half lying on the floor. He tried to rise but hadn't the strength. He felt as if someone had pulled the plug on his energy.

"Something's wrong," he croaked. "I can barely move."

Carole looked at her watch. "Dear Lord! It's past your time!"

Joe fought the lethargy stealing through him. Too tired to worry. It was all he could do to hold his head up.

The world around him became a blur. He was dimly aware of voices mentioning "back door" and "employee entrance" and "bring the car around." He felt himself dragged-carried outside into a shady area that was still blindingly bright, then lifted and folded into a small space ... a slam that sounded like a car trunk lid, then darkness.. . blessed darkness.

- 11 -

JOE . . .

"Carole ... are you all right?"

Joe had awakened to find the two slugs he'd taken in the Post Office scattered around him on his mattress. He didn't know how, but his body had extruded them during daysleep.

Then he'd fed—God, how he hated the word, the concept, the act. It made him feel like some sort of jungle animal; he would never get used to it. The women had decided to alternate, so Lacey had been the donor this time. The sun was just about down, and the three of them had taken their usual positions around the coffee table.

But Joe had noticed that Carole seemed withdrawn. She looked tired, but he sensed it was more than that.

"I'm okay" Carole said without looking at him.

Lacey said, "She's been like this all day." This earned her a brief glare from Carol. "Well it's true. You barely said two words to me before we went to sleep, and maybe half a dozen since we woke up."

"Didn't you sleep well?" Joe said.

"As a matter of fact, no," Carole said.

"Bad dreams?"

"In a way." She looked up, first at Joe, then at Lacey. "Are we proud of ourselves?"

"About what?" Joe said.

"About this morning."

"Yeah," Lacey said. "We reduced the world's undead population by eight and we learned something that could turn this fight around: kill one of the big-shot undead and a whole lot of others die too."

Carole said, "What about how we learned that secret?"

Lacey shook her head. "I'm not following."

Carole sighed and looked at the ceiling. "Torture. Am I the only one who's bothered by the fact that we tortured that creature into giving us the information?"

"Yeah," Lacey said with an edge on her voice. Joe could sense his niece's back rising. "I guess you could say you are. They're already dead, Carole."

"No, they're undead. And they very obviously feel pain."

"Hang on now," Joe said. He caught Carole's troubled gaze and held it. "We did what we had to, Carole. I didn't like it, and I'm sure Lacey didn't either, but this is war and—"

"A war for what?"

"For survival," Lacey said. "Them or us. This isn't a war of ideologies, Carole," Lacey said. "And it's not a war of religions either. This is a war for the survival of the human race."

"Even if we have to sacrifice our humanity to win it?"

Joe leaned back and kept silent. This wasn't what he'd wanted to talk to Carole about, but he sensed this argument had been brewing all day, maybe longer. Best to stay out of the line of fire unless it escalated too far.