Pride is a funny thing.  I mean, there are those with the hubris to suggest that pride and humour are probably some kind of opposite ends of a spectrum, but pride itself is, well kind of amusing.  Or maybe it’s just how malleable it seems.  I suppose there are extreme honour systems where pride reflects how well you’re able to hit the targets of your honour’s needs, but I mark that (in my off-the-cuff system) as being closer to a moral code, and pride and humiliation do connect with morality, but the nexus is not the whole of the map.

The idea that pride is your measure, however, is a strictly human one.

Humans play a lot of face games, in the idea that we present certain qualities of ourselves as the person we are under those circumstances.  Animals (and a lot of those that come from Beyond) may exaggerate their qualities for preservation (“I’m red! I’m poisonous!”  “I’m sixteen times bigger because my claws and scent are higher on the tree!”) but they don’t say, “I’m better.”  “Better” is found out by challenge, it’s not just something you can claim.

This is one of the place us humans and those Outside tend to clash.  They say, “I’m a slayer of Dragons,” for example.  They’ll have two Dragons’ heads to prove it.  We say, “I’m a slayer of Dragons,” and we mean we’re the type of go-getters who cut through red tape, and get things done.  They say, “I can kill you,” and there is no doubt in their mind that that is a possibility.  We say, “I can kill you,” and mean that we’re mad at you and well, we can try.  We’ve never killed anything outside maybe squishing a bug.  It’s not just the literal value, though.  You are what you say you are.

Matana is a vampire.  She’s not disguising herself.  She’s not really one of the —cubi, or a leannan sidhe, or a werewolf who likes to feast on the blood of her enemies, or anything like that, but because she’s not just the parasite, she might shade the truth a little bit.  She might hide herself, imply things, say she’s older than she is, that sort of thing.  (The really old ones follow my rule of thumb, by the way.  Once you’re so unnatural as to stop aging entirely, you’re not as stable.  Of course, aging at a significantly reduced rate is something the parasite just does, so it’s not one of the reliable methods.)

Doloise, on the other hand, wouldn’t even think of lying.  The problem is then in translation.

Doloise, if asked, “What can you do?” could not answer, “Shoot fireballs out of my butt.”  Unless, of course, she could.  She’d probably say, “The firey breath of the Dragon that designed me allowed me to bear his nethermark.”  Or some such poetic expression that would be the slang for explosive-bottom-blasting amongst her people.  It’s not like she’s saying it in some prideful manner, though, and I’m not sure what that would look like except for the occasional, “Of course I can (or can’t) do that.”

Until this morning, I didn’t think I could stake a woman through the wrists (in Ed’s mom’s backyard) in order to see if she could bear the dawn.  I would not have put it in my list of things I can do for pride.  It wasn’t on Heinlein’s list , although after having done it, I might have said it should be.

“You should just stake her.”

Hawk was a smaller man than I thought of him.  He had that lean, snaky look of someone who is used to looking over his shoulder.

“I don’t actually want her dead.”

“She’s a vampire.”

I sighed.  I had used that same sentence a couple of times, myself.

“I know,” I said.

Ed’s mom sat on the porch, peeling an apple.  It was her way of compensating for quitting smoking.  She did long, curly peels of apple, and she was extremely curious about what we were doing.  I had tried to convince her that she didn’t want any part of this, but she ignored my hints.

Roberto and my sister were watching early morning cartoons on the large television screen.  Or, at least that’s where I’d left them.  I wasn’t used to the second language mode and the voices weren’t what I had expected coming from the characters.

Ed had finished his shower and was waiting at the edge of the back porch, idly juggling stakes that Hawk had brought.  “I’d prefer it if I wasn’t actually involved in murder,” he said.  He probably meant it to be light, but it sounded kind of desperate.

“Killing monsters is different,” Hawk said.

“That’s a fabulous argument in la-la-land or wherever you come from, but Matana is kind of a person to me,” Ed said, annoyed.

“She attacked you,” I pointed out.

“E, shut up.”

“You want to come out here and do this?” I growled.

“Hey, you’re the doctor,” he said sarcastically.

It looked like real blood she was bleeding.  We got the silver chain wrapped around the stakes in her wrist just as the dawn broke.

She jerked on the chain, life returning to her body.

This was a pretty dramatic moment, as I’ve seen dead bodies, and it startled me to see reanimation.  It’s like one moment you’re lugging around a heavy  mannequin and then the next it’s a living, breathing human being.

Except it was a vampire.

The blood all over my shoes and hands flared in the sunlight, and then it was gone.  All of it except for an artful amount against the perfectly punctured hole in her chest.

“Should have staked her,” Hawk repeated.

“I appreciate that you didn’t,” she said.  She opened her eyes.  “Ah.  We recognize this binding.   Very European.  Classic materials.  I expected something different, E.”

I shrugged.  “Why mess with what works?”

“You could have maybe used some parallel cables?  CAT-5?” she suggested.  “They would have worked as well.”

“Hawk has family silver.”

“That’s his name these days?” she looked him in the eye, and he didn’t flinch or look away.

“M’name always,” he muttered.

“Have I passed the test?” she asked.  “Or are you going to complete the ritual?”

“I’m no wizard.  But you’re not going anywhere until we get some answers,” I said.

“I’ll bring the lemonade,” Ed’s mom said, cheerfully.

I did have the focus of mind to change my clothes into something I didn’t care about getting dusty, wet, and dirty.  It was just the kind of outfit to greet my fashion-conscious sister in, of course, which is what I did at the aggressive knock.

(I am pretty sure the doorbell works, but something about the door leads people to knock.  I am not certain if it’s the material, the layout, or something else, but people knock more on my door than press the little lit button that gives the pleasant chime and notification of their presence at my door.  I leave it as a mystery for another day.)

“You know, Goodwill does fifty-percent-off sales just about every Saturday,” she said.  “Or I think you can raid some Salvation Army bins.”

My little sister is about an inch taller than me, and whereas my dark hair makes me plain, hers, in the same color, somehow makes her look exotic.  She did things to it, I guess.  (I keep mine cut.)  She has a similar colour of eyes, more blue than on the green side, though.  She’s slim and athletic, though, from the cross-country style of nerdity.  (I have been made aware that there are two nerd sports – wrestling and cross-country.  I would like to put shotput in there somewhere, but that may be wishful thinking.)

I noticed that she wore tiny, sparkly heels, and in fact, a tiara.

“No wings?” I asked, looking up at her head.

“I’m the princess, dolt.”  She grabbed me in a hug I was unable to back out of, and then rubbed her knuckles lightly on the top of my head before letting me go.  I bore it without comment.

“Your place looks clean.  Did you fumigate recently?”  She looked around, mostly noting the bookshelves.

“I had a magical construct living with me for a while,” I said, blythely.

“Like a broom from that scene in `Fantasia’?” she asked.

“More like a blow up doll gone feral,” I smirked.

“Only you, big brother, only you.”  She opened up my refrigerator, checked in my medicine cabinet, and then looked at my desktop background before coming back to the table.  “Where are the shovels?”

“Strange places to be looking for them.”

“I’m just spying so I can tell mother what kind of pornographic, drug-addled nonsense you’re into these days.  Still dating Magster the Nagster?”

I grinned.  “No, we’re splits.”

“Hah!” she blurted, disbelievingly.  “Give it a month, you’ll go crawling back to her.  What happened to Happy Hillary or whatever model doll you were `dating’?”  She used her fingers for big air quotes.

“Doloise died saving me from a fiery end in a Dragon’s lower intestine.”

“I can’t even translate that one.  So.  Let’s get going?”

“Remember where Ed’s mom lives?”

“We’re burying that old hag?  About time!” She opened the door again, and I followed her down the steps.

“She’s a very pleasant person who makes excellent chocolate chip cookies.”

“You’re a man.  Chocolate chip cookies are just one of nature’s little ways of making you do tricks.  I hold out for brownies or real apple pie.  Or old-money.”

There was a man in a white suit waiting, leaning up against the car.  “Who’s that?” I asked.

“Jeeves.”

“Really?  I’ve always wanted a Jeeves.  Do they come in different colors?”

“His name is Roberto, and he owns the car, but I own him, so it’s fair game.  Get in back and give me the address, because we’ve got a satellite navigation system thing-a-ma-bob.”

I let myself in, while my sister spoke to her paramour du jour.   It had leather seats, with a warming unit, and an excellent sound system, although I’m too much of a white guy for Latin love ballads to look natural.  I don’t think it’s a racist thing, just a cultural expectation (which could totally be racist, I guess) thing.  I just wish I got the benefit of all the power and money implied of being “the man” sometimes, instead of all the guilt.  (Yeah, that’s a whole ton of assumed privilege just in that sentence.  I’m at least partially aware, not pure neanderthal, right?)

“Nice car,” I said into the silence that was broken up occasionally by the -cubi inspiring dulcet tones of the navigator.

“Yes, yes she is,” Roberto, aka Jeeves replied.  My sister had her hand on his arm, in a very dominant sort of fashion.  “I like to drive her fast, especially at night.”

I was hoping, in counter to one nausea-induced flurry of worry, that he was really talking about the car and not about my sister.  “Sorry for waking the two of you up,” I tried.

“We had not yet gone to bed,” Roberto said.

“Ah.”  I gave up my quirky conversational gambits and stayed quiet as the white lines of the highway dashed by in the headlights.

“So what’s the scoop with Ed?” my sister asked, turning to look at me.

“Which part?  The ‘I just found out he’s gay,’ part or the, ‘We’re rescuing him from a interlude with a vampire’ part?”

“You really do think you’re funny,” she said, flatly, looking back out the windshield.  “Anyway, I guessed the first part.”

“I have known a vampire,” Roberto said.

“Shh, Jeeves.  You will only encourage him,” she put a finger up to his lips.  He kissed it.

I did not throw up.

“No, really.  I have known a vampire.  She was very sexy.  She liked to bite my neck and call me names.”

I looked around for an air sickness bag, but seeing how far I had to reach to get to the front seat, gave up on it, and just steeled myself in the manly fashion.

My sister murmured something up front that made both of them chuckle in a knowing fashion.

My phone went off then, saving me momentarily.  “It’s E,” I said.

“E?  He goes by E?” Roberto asked.

“It’s a thing.  It’s like his gangsta name,” my sister explained.

“Hawk.  If you want to do it right, pin her wrists.  She’ll recover faster from that than her abdomen.  That’s why they did Christ that way.”

“I don’t think he was a vampire,” I said slowly.

“Evidence is against you.  I’ll be there in forty with the kit.”

After I hung up with Ed, I spent a while swearing aloud just to get it out of my system.  I like to think I had gotten pretty creative given that no one I knew personally had to work up swearing involving imaginary creatures of indeterminate virtues, well, except maybe the atheists in the crowd.

(I was never sure how to count myself.  I mean, how could you know of deities who interacted with mankind but were probably just things from Beyond and yet not really believe in them being effective towards yourself?  I figured it was like believing in the mailman.  At least the mailman delivers in answer to your stamped prayers.  Or some such oddity.)

I stomped around for a few minutes and woke up with some cold, carbonated caffeine and sugar.  Then I sat at my table and stared at the phone.  The minutes mocked me as the screen went into the, “Nothing’s happened! Let’s darken the display!” mode and I sighed and pulled it over to me.

“If this is my brother, I’m going to cut him into bloody gobbets and feed him to passing pigeons.”

“Love you too, sis.  How did you guess?”

“Oh, I say that whenever a phone call wakes me in the pre-sunlight hours.  Guess I just get lucky this time.  You have a preference for breed of pigeon?”

“You couldn’t tell a pigeon from a seagull without a professional.”

“A tall, dark, handsome professional who is paid to handle my eccentricities, you mean.  Some kind of birdwatching prince in search of a young American bride.”

“Still holding out for royalty?”

“Still playing D&D in someone’s mother’s basement?”

“Glad to hear nothing’s changed.”

“You could call our mother sometime.  You could let her know you still deny the need for constant psychiatric evaluation.”

“I wouldn’t want to put any kind of strain on her aging heart.  One psychotic in the family is enough.”

“Like telling her that you were in not one, but two unexplained and unusual accidents in a month?”

I sighed. “You took the call as her, didn’t you?”

“I had to.  After all, my plans wouldn’t come to their evil fruition unless I get to be the one to tell her of your unfortunate and untimely demise.  What do you need, anyway?  Are you in…” she gave it a moment of savored anticipation, “trouble?”

“Yeah, I need a ride.”

“The clinic’s not open until nine.  Who did you knock up, and was she homeless or merely drunk at the time?”

“Not that kind of trouble.”

“What is it, then?  Arson?  Rape?  Theft?” She paused.  “Murder?”

“Murder, definitely murder.”

“Brother of mine, in some ways you never disappoint.”  I heard her shift a little.  “Let me get my pants on and I’ll come by.  Still living in that little hovel on the East side?”

“Sorry, some of us haven’t found the right millionaire,” I pointed out.  It wasn’t a hovel.  It was snug and cozy, the way I liked it.

“You mean, like, any?” she laughed.  “Do I need my kevlar?”

“This is the wrong side of the highway for the body armor,” I sighed.  “In fact, I had a good police presence here just yesterday.”

“So you mean all the good drugs are gone?”

“Are we even related genetically?” I asked.

“Mom said she tried to sell you to the gypsies, but they returned you during the buyer’s remorse period.”

“Funny, mom told me you were the inspiration for“The Ransom of Red Chief.'”

“You’re still a charmer.  Well, working on it anyway.  Keep practicing.  Hold on.”  She put the phone down and said something in a quiet murmur.  Probably something like, “Jeeves, please get the car ready.”  She returned.  “Fine.  I have clothes and money, and you can bring the shovels.  Where are we burying her?”

“Somewhere in Boulder.  And why do you think it’s a her?”

“Because, my big brother, you’ve never been smart about women, so if you’re in trouble, it’s about a girl.”

“Huh.”  I shrugged.  “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I am.  I’m your little sister.  I know everything about you and you have to love me anyway.  Kiss, and bye now.  I’ll see you in about twenty.”

I was actually surprised that she was willing to help, but it had been a while since we’d seen each other.  I don’t really know what she was expecting to find, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it turned out to be a unicorn.

Lion, and now unicorn.  The Small types had a sense of humour.  I had no doubt that it was the second Messenger.  The only question is what message it was sending… protection of my friends?  Potential for mayhem?  Mere mischief?  I only hoped it didn’t bring me a riddle.  I still hadn’t gotten the first ones figured out.

I brought some sheets for Matana’s body.  It was ridiculously hard to kill a vampire, and really, I didn’t have the time or patience for it.  I wanted some answers first.  The sunlight would destroy the traces of her blood, but until dawn arrived there would be a lot of questions if someone passed by or otherwise stumbled upon the scene.  I had wanted Ed to stay by the body so no one else picked her up, but I had sent him to his mom’s to wait for me.

Of course, I was hoping this wasn’t another set-up.  First Sylvia, and now Matana.  Neither permanent, but both would have looked terrible if seen by a judge.  I realized with a laugh that I was the kind of friend who would help a friend move bodies, apparently.

I made another call to a number I had in my phone that I’d only used one other time.  The person on the other end was far more murderous in nature and likely to cause bloody trouble than my sister.  Of course, he was also a treasure trove of vampire trivia I’d met on a BBS in the pre-Internet days, and I believed to have some experience in what I was about to try to do.

I ran my errands and picked up some dinner on the way back.  It was around the end of rush hour.  If I really believed in movie zombies, I would have been scared the way the wafting smell of french fries seemed to grab the attention of the other people on the bus.  After a day of work anyone might look a bit wan and glazed, like a sad diet doughnut.  Several people noted how good they smelled, and I just drew the bag closer to me.  I was getting a little nervous that either I would be mobbed if I actually started eating them, or that they would be cold by the time the bus lurched to my stop.  (And lurch it did; isn’t the rule that the lazy late driver gets the old, decrepit bus?)

Once I decided that the people on the bus were not going to start shambling off after me, moaning, “FRiiiiiiiieeeees,” I had too much time to think while I walked.  At least I had salty, oily, carbohydrate goodness to fuel me.

I was thinking about Rohana.  I was feeling strangely conflicted.  Half of me felt good, I mean, really good, like I should skip and dance and music from an old musical would swell up behind me and I’d grow a hat and a cane and, well, you know the rest.  Half of me was cautious and concerned because I didn’t really know a lot about her.  Did she have a dog?  A boyfriend?  A skeleton or something grisly in her closet?  She said she wasn’t a witch, but she was aware of them.  She knew Maggie.

Maggie.  The piece in the puzzle I kept trying not to think about, because I didn’t want to think her capable of making a simulacrum.  I didn’t want to be dragged into her war, and yet, I knew, I knew in a way that was impossible to clear from cynicism, that she still wanted something from me.

I was worried about Rohana, really.  I decided that as I came through the door, put my keys in my octopus cup, left my bag of hamburgers and processed poultry parts on the table and went to the bathroom.  The last block had been less dancing and Broadway and more this last little piggy.

Ahem.

Once my business was done, I sat and ate, only half-watching some things I’d saved on the recorder.  I really only watch things that have been recommended to me, but there were some neat stories out there.  Alas, the best of them always seemed short lived, but that could have been part of the appeal; a show past its time was always a sad thing.

I washed up some as I hate that hour-after-cheeseburger feeling.  Brushed my teeth, and parked myself in front of the tube for a while.  I felt myself getting pretty sleepy and so set my alarm so that I’d catch up with Ed around midnight, if only to yank his chain a little.

I slept through it, of course, deep  in uneasy dreams.  Something moon-like was chasing me, but only enough to get my adrenaline to pump and keep me uneasy.  It was playing with me, silver-white in the darkness, fast, fleet of foot.

I picked up the phone in a kind of automatic motion, without looking to see who it was. “Yuh?” I asked, sounding extremely insightful and witty.

“E.  I… didn’t think there’d be so much blood.”

“What?” Awakefulness was forced upon me like a deluge of water from a bucket.  It was less like when Maggie would snap sobriety into me, which I would rather describe as a forceful joining of my drunk and undrunk selves with the alcohol squished out of me, and more like jumping into a puddle and finding it was the Marianas Trench.  “Ed.  Ed, what happened?” He sounded weak and tinny over the connection, which, by the way, got excellent freakin’ signal.

“You were right.”

You know, usually I love to hear those words.  Those words are sweet, sweet words of vindication, an aperitif that led to a full course of redemption.  Somehow they were tasting of dust and clay, and old feathers, like the underworld in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

“You were right, E.  She attacked me.  I just… I…”

“Talk to me, Ed.  Use your words.”  I bit my tongue.  “What do you need?  Where are you?”

“I’m…” he wandered off for a moment, but just before I said something else, he gave me a street name I didn’t recognize.  “It’s a cul-de-sac off of,” and I remembered that as not too far from his mom’s house.  “I’m… I’m covered with blood.”

“OK.  You need help.  You need a new set of clothes.  It’s,” I looked at the clock above the television.  “It’s at least an hour before dawn.  Is she dead?”

“I…”

“Topor, it’s called.  You did a good job, pinning at least part of her heart, right?  None of that ‘Vampire with Brooklyn’ business?” I asked.  “What kind of stake?”  I fumbled for my keys, and slid into my shoes.

“That’s… that’s why I called, E.”

“It doesn’t really matter.  Oh,” I swore.  “I don’t have a car.  OK.  I’ve got to…” I tried to think of the people I could call for a ride.  The list didn’t quite begin and end with Ed, but once you took Maggie off the list, it was disturbingly short.

I’d have to call my sister.

“No, it does matter.  I didn’t do it, exactly.”

“Hey, this isn’t a court of law.  It’s absolutely self-defense, but there’s things we have to do.  I’ll have to let you go.  There’s a lot of calls I have to make.  Can you walk to your mom’s?”

“No, I mean…  Something else did it.”

“Wait, uh, what?”

“E. Promise you won’t laugh.”

I took a deep breath.  “Ed, after everything we’ve been through together, that’s one promise I can’t really make.  Hit me.”

“It was a unicorn.”

I almost laughed.  I exhaled a wheezy little squeaky thing and then caught my breath.  “A unicorn?”

“Yeah.  And it mentioned your name.”