Charlie Huston - No Dominion

– So what went wrong?

He takes a drag, blows a ring.

– What went wrong is I likes to party! I likes to have a good time. And one thing the enforcers do not get to do is have a good time. Also, according to Vandewater, I happen to be the most amoral kid you’re likely to ever run across. Besides being, you know, a spoiled little shit. When I was down here, it was, like, the bomb. Secret agent on his own.

He raises his arms, indicating the room.

– Sweet pad, nice threads, piles of money.

He looks up at Poncho. She bends and kisses him. He looks at me.

– Beautiful ladies. Like James Bond, man. But cooler.

He frowns.

– But then I’d have to go see M. Go Uptown like I was going to class, stop by her place. Have tea for fuck sake. Give my report. Man! That is not the kind of Vampyre action I was looking for. Then this thing came up.

I finish my beer.

– Tell me about that.

– Man, talk about your blessings in disguise. OK, so I’m down here. I mean, she’s had me down here, but laying veeeeery low. Don’t want to get scented. Once I’ve kind of established residency, I open a vein one night. Actually, one of her boys opened it for me, but that’s just details. The good part is when I stumble into a place we knew Tom liked to hang at. This agro-vegan joint on C. I come in bleeding, the staff, it was like raw meat to them, they freak out. Tom is all over me, saying he’ll get me an ambulance and shit. I’m pretty sure he thought a free meal had just landed in his lap. Then he got a good smell. Once he realized I was infected, I moved up from meal to recruit. Not his fault he didn’t know I’d been infected for years. I did the whole act.

He puts his hands to the sides of his head.

– Vyrus? What Vyrus? Vampyre? You’re crazy! Crazy! It can’t be! It just can’t be! Well, you saw my act a couple times today. What can I say? I got talent! So I played it freaked out, but not for too long. Then I played quick study, but not too quick. Then I played true believer. I played that all the way. Tom loved it. I was his star pupil. All the Anarchist meetings, calling on me to answer questions about doctrine and shit? A total drag. But I’ll give the guy this: He was sincere. For whatever that got him.

I take a drag, having witnessed what being sincere got Tom.

– What about Terry?

– Terry! Now that man, he is the mac. Me, I think he had me pegged the first time Tom brought me in for vetting. He sat back, let Lydia and Tom and some of the other council members drill me on my story and my compatibility with the goals of the Society.

He makes his hand into a puppet and flaps its mouth open and shut.

– All that crap. He barely asked shit. But I think he knew then. Not that I had a clue. I thought I was smooth. But, man, well, you know, Terry is the smoothest. I had no idea he was on to me until he showed up here with Hurley and gave me the score.

– What was the score?

He shakes his head.

– What do you think it was? Man, the score was tell him every fucking thing he wanted to know or Hurley would start chopping stuff off of me until I was a biscuit. No problem, man, I squawked. And I got to say, greatest piece of luck I ever had. I spilled it all. Spilled who I was, where I came from, where the anathema was coming from, all of it. And Terry? He watched me, just like he watched during my vetting, and when I was done spilling, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Man, an offer I would never refuse.

I hold up my empty, start to stand.

– Mind if I get another?

Poncho waves me back down and gets it for me.

I take it from her hand.

She gives me a hard look, still pissed at the way I beat on her squeeze.

I drink the beer.

– So, Terry’s offer?

The Count takes Poncho’s hand as she circles back around him.

– Well, here I am, right? I play my part in this show, and I get to stay down here. No more Mrs. Vandewater. No more sieg heil. No worrying about when I’m gonna get called back and told to put on a suit and act like all the other little robots. Freedom, man. That was the deal.

– So you told Vandewater Terry’s position was unstable.

– Yeah. Told her he was having trouble with Tom. Told her we could rock things down here, maybe start an outright revolution if we could make it look like Tom was behind the anathema. But I told her it couldn’t come from me, Terry wouldn’t buy it from me. It had to come from someone he had a history with.

– Me.

He points at his nose.

– Bingo. Terry was looking to ditch Tom. He said he needed a witness for a trial. He said he needed two. He said I was good because I was one of Tom’s guys. But he said the other one needed to be old school. He said it needed to be someone Lydia would accept. He mentioned you.

– It worked.

– Hell yeah! I sent you Uptown. Terry said not to be too specific. Said it would look weird if I knew exactly where the shit was coming from. Said to point you to the Hood and that would be close enough. Fuck it, it turned out OK. Terry said it would. You wound up in Vandewater’s clutches, she messed with your head a little, you made a move, she let you escape and told you Tom was her courier as you were on your way out.

– And all she had to do was lose an eyeball and take a bellyful of bullets.

He waves his hand back and forth.

– Trust me, for her cause, losing an eyeball, taking some lead? That is nothing. If she thought it was gonna bring down the Society, she’d cut off her tits. If she thought it’d bring down the Hood, she’d cut off her tits and fuck Dexter Predo. And she hates his ass. Lady is a stone zealot. Cra-zy. Period. Funny, though, she thinks you’re coming down here, gonna blow shit sky-high, gonna rock the boat. Had no idea she was helping to set Tom up for the fall. Helping to, like, entrench Terry’s chairmanship. Crazy, right? All the reversals, the double-agenting, I loved it. Like Deep Cover and I’m all Laurence Fishburne. In too deep for my own good, flippin’ and trippin’. But I had it under control. It’s easy if you’re not worried about right and wrong. You know, if you’re just worried about yourself. Priorities, man, I have ’em.

– And the rest?

– Easy-peasy, man. Hey, I don’t want you bouncing me around every day, but you made it easy to play the role. That shit was scary. And then in the trial ? That worked out perfect. The way you were playing it all stoic set me up just right when I cracked. I mean, the plan was, you’d be telling your story and I’d hop in with mine. But the way it played was better yet. And my cherry, just when everyone is sure I’m full of it, just when they know I’m lying through my teeth, when I pop out with, I’m a spy! Did you see the look on Tom’s face? He shit his pants. He must have shit his pants. You though, you were stone cold. That’s what old lady Vandewater told me. Snap! That was it for Tom. Game ovaah!

– Yeah. Terry said something about Lydia?

– Oh, damn, Lydia. She really a lesbo? Cuz I’m just saying, some of that? I could do some of that.

Poncho slaps the top of his head.

He looks up at her.

– There’s plenty to go around, baby. No worries.

I grind some sleep from my eyes.

– How’d she go for you getting cut loose?

– Terry Bird to the rescue. After you took off to deal with Tom, Terry did some additional interrogation. He convinced Lydia, in a way where she was kind of thinking it was her own idea, that keeping me around was best. Double agent they could use to send false information back to the Coalition. She went for it. Plus, you know, the money. The Society is always hurting for money. Long as I’m here, I can help with that. So she agreed. House arrest. Gonna put a watch on me until I prove my loyalty. But that’ll come soon enough. And, hey!