The Devil's Beat (The Devil's Mark) Read online

  “Who?”

  “The woman on the television.”

  “Cindy?”

  “No, her gornichnaya.”

  “Her what?”

  He waived his hands, “Her serving girl, house woman...”

  Max had to think about it for a moment. He hadn't really paid much attention to anyone but Cindy. She was a bitch, but she was a hot, sexy, blonde bitch. Max vaguely remembered her maid— swarthy skin, sturdy build with a thick Russian accent. Of course, Cindy treated her like dirt on the show.

  “Oh, I think you mean her maid.”

  “Is not important. She is my Anesha returned to me. I must find her!” Vlad's face filled with hope and determination as he hopped out of his chair.

  Max had that not-communicating feeling again. He said, “Uh, since she is an actress, we could find her on-line.”

  Vlad scowled. “On what line?”

  Max carefully asked, “Vlad, when was the last time you were up and walking around?”

  “Is no matter! Take me to this line!”

  “Have you ever heard of the internet?”

  Vlad's senses were exceptionally sharp, and even with the emotional high he was riding, he detected the uncertainty in Max's voice. His red eyes narrowed as he looked at Max more intently. “What makes you so nervous now?”

  “Uh, well, it's complicated. I suspect that there have been a lot of changes since you were last around.”

  “Is no matter! She is reborn!”

  “Calm down, Vlad, I can help you find her, but you have to let me fill you in on what you have been missing.”

  It took a while, but with Mike and Josh's help, Max convinced Vlad to hold off on his quest till they had a chance to bring him up to date. They also convinced him that this was best done over drinks. As Vlad calmed down, his English improved, and his southern accent regained its ascendency. After making sure that all parties were talking about the same kind of drink, the four men headed out. In the main hall, Max realized that there might be another problem.

  “Uh, Vlad, it's only a little after noon. Can you go outside now?”

  “Of course I can go outside.” He paused and looked dangerously at Max. “Unless you forbid it.”

  “No, I mean, it's a bright sunny day. Is that going to be a problem?”

  Vlad looked at Max strangely. “No. Why?”

  “You don't explode or burn up in sunlight?”

  Now Vlad looked concerned for Max. “Um, never mind, Vlad, dumb question, I guess.” He turned quickly, glanced at the others. “Okay guys, let’s go.”

  Max got as far as opening the front door. When he pulled it open, something brown and red flopped over the threshold onto the floor. Max looked down and screamed. He jumped back, ran into Mike, and they both went down on the floor. Josh and Vlad's reflexes were quick enough to get them out of the way.

  From the floor, Mike cursed Max. “What the hell, Max?”

  Max had time to sit up and see that the thing in the doorway was not alive. In fact, it was very dead. It was a headless dog. It was lying across the threshold, a small amount of blood pooling from its neck. Max's voice was shaking badly when he said, “Ah holy... fuck! God... heck! What the hell is that?”

  Josh and Vlad didn't seem in the least disturbed. They both leaned down to study it, Josh said, “Whoa, dudes, it looks like a headless dog.”

  Vlad glared at Josh, but Max was shaking hard. “Wha... why... why is there a headless dog on my porch?”

  Vlad grabbed it by the scruff of its back and examined it from all angles. “Its head looks like it was torn off. There are no signs of teeth marks.”

  Max supposed that Vlad would know. He flopped back and lay prone on the floor looking at the ceiling, shaking.

  Josh turned and saw Max's state. “Whoa dude, you need some of Dr. Mellow's special elixir.”

  Mike looked at him. “Jesus, Max. Everything else you've gone through and you react that way to a headless mutt?”

  Max's only response was to close his eyes and groan.

  There's a Tear in My Beer

  Max and company were back in his motel room. Max had finally gotten the shakes under control and several times had verified that no one else knew why someone would toss a headless Rottweiler on his porch. Theories had ranged from cultists to deranged fans. Meanwhile, Mike had poured him and everyone else a big water glass full of hooch, and every single person there tossed it back like it was lemonade. Vlad's patience was just about at its end. After blatantly not exploding in the early afternoon sunshine and getting the miracles of cars sort of explained to him, he had repeatedly asked how they would find his lost love on the way to the motel.

  By unanimous consent, Josh was the one to explain the modern world to Vlad. It turned out that Vlad was last out and about around 1850s. He “retired” right before the civil war. When Max heard this, he breathed a prayer of thanks. Having a confederate vampire on his hands could have spelled all kinds of hurt. So, since Josh had lived through the intervening years, he was uniquely qualified to be Vlad's guide.

  An indeterminate time later, Vlad was reasonably well caught up. Max marveled at how well Vlad had taken everything in. When he mentioned this, Vlad had said, “Nothing has changed. Men still bleed.” After that, Max drank more and talked less. By the time Josh rounded it all up, with some help from Mike on the details of the '90s, '00s, and '10s, the group had polished off about three bottles of Jack Daniels, and they were all riding high.

  Mike spoke up. “So Vlad, if you have been uh, incommunicado, all these years, how do you know this actress chick?”

  Vlad's eyes grew distant, and he started to talk in a steady monotone—like he was reciting something. His Russian accent returned as he spoke.

  “Anesha was most beautiful woman I knew. Full with life and grace and happiness. When we married, I sang to God my thanks. Nothing in life was so precious to me. She brought out sun in cold Rus winter. She was gornichnaya to Nobleman. It was there that hell-be-damned prince first sees her. George Igorovitch sent for her that night. Took her from my home. I was just merchant, I could not stop them. She screamed and fought as they took her away.

  “Next day, they would not let me into castle. I go there every day, but no word of my Anesha, till one day, they say, ‘We bring her to you now.’ I was so happy, but they brought me her dead. She had been... beaten and raped. They said, she scratched Prince, so he gave her to the guards. They used her till she was dead.

  “I tore open one guard’s throat and attacked other, but there were too many of them. They beat me. I hoped it was to death, but I woke up in cold cell. I wished I had died, but God laughed at me, and I did not die. Hatred filled me like fire, but nothing could I do.

  “Then one time, I wake up to see woman in my cell. She said that she was Lilitu, sorceress emissary of Batu Kahn, here to deliver demand for surrender of Riazan. She told me she could smell my anger and hate, and she would help me to have my revenge. She said that in three nights’ time, I would find my cell open, and that, if I should eat the heart of guard, then for one night, I would be more powerful than all other man. Her word was true, and after I killed the guard and ate every bit of his heart, I roamed throughout castle and killed everyone I found. None could stop me, none could meet my fury. The barbarians could see that I was one of them. We fought and killed side by side. During the night of blood, the castle fell to Batu Kahn and, with the barbarians, I killed everyone in the castle.

  “My vengeance was denied because Prince Igorovitch ran to the church to hide with the Priests. There, he was killed by another. In the morning, I round up the nuns and the priests and spit them and burn them alive. Barbarians think this good fun. We tortured, raped and killed the women of the city, and when there was nothing else, we raised the city to the ground. It was said of that day, ‘No eye remained open to weep for the dead.’

  “In my quest for vengeance, I destroyed them all, those who took my Anesha and those who let them. I destroyed them all
and drank their blood and then bathed in it. When I was done with that, my need for bloody vengeance was not quenched. The woman Lilitu came to me, and I pleaded with her to give me more power. She made demands, and even though she smelled of rotted corpse, I lay with her, and when I rose, I was made powerful again.

  “I joined the Kahn's horde, and we destroyed and burned everything in our path. When their fury was spent, mine was not. In my madness, I called forth Lilitu and demanded more vengeance. I told her that I would destroy the angel who made me fall in love, and thus spit in God's face for what he had done.

  “She told me this was beyond her power, but not beyond the one she served. His name was Shaitan. He could give me what I asked, but there would be a price. I accepted, and Shaitan brought me the angel responsible for my love. He gave me the power to kill him and I did. I ate his heart.

  “After that, my hunger for vengeance became hunger for blood, and I slaked my thirst often. I made destruction and terror for Shaitan and spat in God's face. Then, one day in Georgia, I killed a nigger girl and drank her hot blood. When I was done, I looked at her, and there I saw Anesha's face and everything within me died, leaving nothing but emptiness. I left plantation and wandered for years until I found this house. Something within called to me. It was full of passion and death, and I found it soothing. After time, all hunger left me, and I placed myself in casket that you found. Then flood came, and I was trapped. I could feel myself dissolving, becoming nothing but the hunger.”

  ***

  Vlad paused and looked at Max. He said with a restored southern accent, “When I smelled your blood, sir, I tried again in vain to get out. It is only because of you that I am free from that torment. Even so, after you freed me, it is good that you knocked my head off and destroyed my body, because otherwise, I would surely have killed you.”

  The silence that followed Vlad's story was profound. Vlad sat looking into his drink, sad and lost. Then Josh stirred and summed it up for everyone. “Whoa, dude. That is some totally heavy, heavy shit.”

  Vlad downed another glass of Jack. Josh's face brightened, and he said, “And now this Anny chick has, like, been reincarnated and you have a chance to be with your one true love.”

  Vlad looked at the world's oldest stoner with something like wonder in his eyes. He merely said, “Yes,” but never has one word carried so much emotion.

  Josh frowned. “Dude, I hate to tell you this, but it'll never happen.”

  Vlad's eyes narrowed dangerously at Josh. He said, “Are you going to try and stop me, sir?”

  Josh put his hands out in front of himself to ward off Vlad's anger. He slopped Jack Daniels all over the floor as he did it. He didn't notice. “No, dude, don't get me wrong. I'm not gonna stop you, but it just won't work. See, yer an immortal vampire and all, and she is just a woman. She's going to get all old and shit, and you are just going to have to watch her die again. Trust me. It sucks large donkey dicks. Every time it happens to me, I swear off women, but then I get stupid, and it happens again. The summer of love, dude, that was the thing, ya know, love the one you're with and all? Well that din't work either. I started lovin' the one I was with, and then it stuck, and then she OD'd.”

  Now it was Josh's turn to look sad and lost.

  Everyone fell silent for a moment and then Mike clapped his hands together. “Right...okay, who wants pizza?”

  There’s Got to be a Morning After

  The next morning, Max woke up and wished he hadn't. Jack Daniel's revenge was pounding through his stomach and head. Max peered through his misery and looked around at the empty bottles and the stack of pizza boxes. He stumbled to the bathroom to see if he could find water and ibuprofen. Unfortunately, what he found was an unbelievably nasty mess. The smell alone was like a solid wall. Nothing with a nose would voluntarily go into that bathroom. The memory of a drunken Vlad, trying to eat pizza and Cheetos seemed to be swimming around in his brain somewhere. Vlad's stomach had not welcomed the switch back to solid food, and he had run to the bathroom several times to vomit it all back up. Vlad, who had defied death for revenge, wouldn't let a little thing like his stomach stop him, so he had kept doing it on the theory that, eventually, it would stay down. The sheer amount of half digested pizza coating the bathroom was a testament to the indomitability of the human will and should have buoyed Max up, but instead, it triggered his own stomach. He added the remains of his own dinner to that shrine of perseverance and then downed a handful of pain killers with a glass of water. Max stumbled back out to the room. On the wall, someone had drawn the message, “The Man Sucks!” in foot-tall letters with something that looked like red lipstick. As punctuation, there was a knife sticking in the wall where the period should be, and there were a pair of pink woman’s panties hanging from the knife. Max had no idea how any of that got there. He surveyed the rest of the damage and, in the process, counted only two other bodies.

  Max had a gong of fear go off in his head at the term “bodies.” The adrenalin rush nearly popped his head, but to his quick relief, both Josh and Mike were snoring loudly. Max's observation that Vlad wasn't there was followed by the thought, Oh shit! Vlad's not here!, which was then followed by Max yelling at Mike and Josh, “Shit! Vlad's not here!” In the absence of response that followed, Max looked at the clock to see how long Vlad might have been roaming around. To his relief, he found that it was only 7:30 in the morning.

  He shook, yelled, and poked at Mike where he lay on the broken bed until Mike finally started coming around. Mike protested the treatment until the idea of a drunk vampire running around town sank into his pickled brains. He promptly got up, ran to the bathroom, and added his tribute to the porcelain god.

  By this time, Josh had awoken as well. He was sitting on the bed, wrapped in the covers, blinking the sleep from his eyes while his head followed Max's pacing like a patron at a tennis match.

  For his part, Max was frantic, but didn't know what to do. When Mike reappeared, Max whirled on him and demanded, “Mike, what are we going to do? We've set a bloody drunken vampire loose on Mississippi!”

  Mike cringed from the volume of Max's shout. “Maybe he'll be fine. He gave you his word that he wouldn't eat anybody.”

  “What if he was too drunk stop himself? How will we find him?”

  Josh smiled. “Dude, we can just follow the screams.”

  Max glared at Josh, preparing a scathing reply, but then he slumped as the image sank in. “OhGodOhGodOhGod! We can't let that happen. I can't have another death on my conscience. We have to call the Sheriff.”

  Mike automatically said, “Police Chief.”

  Max didn't respond, he just pulled out his phone. It wasn't till it was in his hands that he realized that he didn't know the number for the police department here. He looked blankly at his phone momentarily and then dialed 911.

  When the call was answered, Max started talking. He got as far as “Hello, we have an emergency situation....” before he realized that he was talking to a recording.

  The pleasant female voice on the other side was saying, “...nature of your emergency, date, time and best phone number to reach you at. There are three callers ahead of you. Your estimated hold time is 18 minutes. While you are waiting please enjoy the music.” The haunting strains of “Sarah's Song” started playing over the phone.

  Max screamed. He tried to come up with some sort of curse adequate to carry his frustration, but the only things he could come up with involved Jesus or God. He almost threw his phone through the window, but he finally settled for just an inarticulate yell. Mike put his hands over his ears in pain, but Josh had picked up the motel propaganda notebook and was flipping nonchalantly through it.

  Max paused to take a breath, and Josh slipped into the pause smoothly. “Dude, the number for the police is right here.”

  The words penetrated Max's tantrum. “What is it?” He dialed the number Josh recited and was rewarded with a ring tone.

  After one ring, a voice answered, “Chief Wayne
speaking.”

  Max said, “Chief, thank God. This is Max Faust. I have a problem here. I need to report a missing person who, uh, may be mentally unstable and dangerous. He is average height with long wavy black hair and a straight, thin nose...”

  “Mr. Faust, it sounds like your man is right here in the lockup drying out. The deputy picked him up last night drunker than a skunk and smelling twice as bad. I shoulda known this low-life scum was associating with you.”

  Relief surged through Max. He said, “Chief, I love you right now!”

  The Chief paused a moment after that and then said with a growl, “Don't be getting no queer northerner ideas. I was just about ready to toss him out.”

  “No! You can't do that!”

  The Chief replied with a drill sergeant cadence, “Would you like to inform me of the reason I cannot let this man go?”

  Max swallowed. He hadn't planned this far ahead. “He, uh, he's well...he's on medication! Yeah, and he hasn't taken it recently, and he can get violent without it. So, don't let him out till I get there with his medication. Okay? He can be quite... uh... moody.”

  “Son, he ain't goin nowhere till he pays the fine anyway. I assume that you are familiar with the fine to which I am referring?”

  Max swallowed, remembering his nights in the city lock up. “Uh yeah, I know. Look, I'll come there and pay the fine, just don't let him out till I get there... with his meds.”

  “He'll be here, bright eyed and bushy tailed, Faust.” beep.

  Max turned, grabbed his keys. “Come on guys! Wayne's got Vlad. We've got to go get him.”

  Josh and Mike followed Max out the door, but Mike turned and headed for his room. He said, “Max, you go get him. I'm going to go get a shower and go back to bed.”

  Josh shrugged when Max looked at him. “I'm coming along, bro. Never go see The Man alone.”

  Max nodded his thanks, and the two of them headed out to the station, which was just outside of town—about six blocks away.