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From: A Vampyre Blues: The Passion of Varnado
By Chris Hayden
Introduction
The Story Thus Far:
Varnado, a young African American Vampyre has fallen in love with Sheba Ferguson a very married human woman. Varnado has decided to win Sheba's heart without using his Vampyre powers or revealing his secret to her. Harry Halbert, Lord Baltimore, a powerful 300-year old Vampyre who is supposed to be a mentor to Varnado but whose relationship is ambiguous at best, has discovered this and is using every means at his disposal to keep Varnado and Sheba apart; it is forbidden for a Vampyre to love a human.
Trouble is brewing; a possible war between the Vampyres and a rival clan of monsters, the death worshipping Guhl. When the story opens Varnado and Lord Baltimore (who Varnado calls "Lord Moe") are standing outside the smoldering ruins of Dessaloni Nights, a nightclub owned by Phil Dessaloni and his "sons"
Jake and Sonny. They have been killed in the fire; Lord Moe sees it as the result of their failing to follow the oldest and strictest law of Vampyrism, "Keep to the Shadows".
As they watch, a mysterious black slab is hauled from the ruins and impounded by the authorities and a bystander, a terrible old man, goes berserk and is subdued and arrested.
Varnado and Lord Moe repair to Mel's All Night Diner to discuss these events. Lord Moe is convinced that the Guhl are responsible for the fire, and though the Dessaloni's were violating the law they must be avenged.
Varnado is anxious to get away; a little while before all this he had seen Sheba for the first time, standing on her balcony and fallen head over heels in love.
The pair split up. Varnado returns to his spy place, a roof across the street from her apartment. There he is discovered and confronted by Lord Moe. Upon confirmation of his suspicions that Varnado is not stalking Sheba but is in love with her, he forces Varnado to leave with him, "for her good and his" with a thinly veiled threat that he will kill Sheba and her husband Clyde if Varnado does not comply.
As morning approaches, the two kill a man outside an abandoned factory on the edge of town.
The Guhl summon Lord Baltimore to a meeting. He invites Varnado to accompany him. At the meeting the Guhl state that the black slab that was removed from the ruins of the Dessaloni's nightclub is their property, and they demand that Lord Baltimore return it to them. He states that he does not have it, that it is in the
custody of the human police, but Varnado has been in the evidence locker and discovered that someone has stolen it. The Guhl give him 48 hours to return it anyway.
Varnado, suspecting Lord Moe wants to incite bloodshed between the Vampyres and the Guhl has attended the meeting as a peacemaker but he loses his temper at the high handed conduct of the death worshippers and breaks up the meeting, to Lord Moe's obvious satisfaction.
We begin or story after the meeting; Lord Moe is exhorting Varnado to rally the rest of the Vampyres to take part in the coming struggle.
Chapter Eight—Rally 'Round the Fang, Girls!
Q—So are you human?
A-- Insofar as we are also monsters, yes—
"Now you must rally the Vampyre Nation," Lord Moe said, shaking his fist. "Rally them, I say!"
"I dunno, Moe," I said. "Maybe we should give Peace a chance."
"Too late for that!"
"We can hope," I replied.
"Hope! He snorted. "Women hope! Little boys and girls hope! A full-growed man knows that the shit is eventually going to hit the fan somewhere, somehow, and he gits his hip boots on and gits ready!
"This war is as inevitable as the deaths of Romeo and Juliet in the fifth act. They are the Lovers of the Dead. We are the Undead. We represent and intolerable heresy they must wipe out and smash!
"No good hopin'! Banish everything from your mind but the inevitability of this Holy War and do your duty! Rally the troops!"
"And what'll you bee doin' while I'm rallyin'?" I asked him.
"Why, I'll be at headquarters, supervisin' yoah efforts," he said, sticking his left hand inside his coat like Napoleon Bonaparte. "Now run along. You have lots and lots of work to do. I'm sure you'll be smashing!"
"Fat chance."
"There is no place for chance in mah precise calculations, suh. Fat or otherwise."
So, I went to see a few Vamps.
Ch'in first.
Ah, Ch'in. She was everything a 21st Century Vamp should be. Online. Hi Tech. Up tight outta sight and with it.
Her hideout was in an underground grotto down by the docks. It was crammed with computers and electronic equipment.
She was a ravishing raven-haired beauty who looked to be about nineteen years old. She was wearing a beige space age with a NASA shoulder patch.
She just had this one itty-bitty problem….
After she greeted me, smiling, she ushered me into her place and offered me a chair, which I refused, and then, yelling, shoved a cross in my face.
"Pretty," I told her. I took it from her, kissed it and put it in my coat pocket. "Now let's cut the comedy, Ch'in."
"Just kidding," she grinned. "Say! You don't have that son of a bitch Halbert with you, do you?"
"Nope! Why?"
She started raving about what a creep he is, what a monster he is, how he incited the Native Americans to rise up against the white settlers time and time again and sold them defective firearms to fight with. All the time she was moving around, searching for something. I acted like I didn't notice.
She soon found it. "Thin fast, Blacula!" she yelled and then she tossed a handful of paper packets in my face. They hit me and fell to the ground harmlessly. I picked one up. Garlic salt.
"I guess it might help to open the packages first, huh?" she said.
I put it in my pocket with the cross. "I may have some in mien zupe later," I said.
Ch'in was new to the game. So new that she didn't even know that she was a Vamp. She couldn't figure out why all these creepy bloodsuckers kept coming round. She would grow out of it. It's a stage.
Confused as she was about her identity she wouldn't be much help in a fight, but I tried to rally her to the Fang anyway.
"I'll make no league with the Unholy," she told me, throwing her shoulders back, looking noble.
"You don't even know what you're saying," I told her. "What about him over there?"
"Who?" she asked nervously.
Along one wall of her joint was a bank of TV screens, dozens of them, all tuned to different channels. A young Chinese guy (Okay! Asian! I didn't ask him!) was sitting on a stool in front of the screens and staring at them with a vacant expression.
He was wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans and no shoes. He looked rather wan and had dark circles under his eyes.
I stepped over to him and raised his left arm. Sure enough, two little holes in his wrist.
"This guy right here who looks a couple of quarts low," I smirked. "Bad form to leave the evidence sitting around."
"Let him alone, you bloodsucking night beast!" Ch'in snarled, jumping to my side and snatching his wrist away. "He's just a poor homeless guy I let crash here 'til he gets back on his feet!"
"I got your crash right here!" I laughed.
I was getting nowhere fast. Maybe in a few weeks or months or years or centuries when she finally found herself or got herself a mentor she could trust, she might be a good road dog. But not now.
Next I went to see Moel.
She lived in a room behind a funky little herb shop she ran in a boho neighborhood of visual artists and musicians. She told fortunes, read auras and Vamped.
She wouldn't even let me in her place until she was sure Lord Moe was not with me. Then she took me in her little back room. It was hung with tapestries and macramé. The air was thick with incense.
Moel was a striking female almost seven feet tall with long brown wavy hair that hung down her back almost to the floor. She was wearing a leaf green peasant dress with a brown shawl and brown leather sandals.
"I detest that creature Halbert," she hissed. Her hazel eyes were venomous.
"Yeah, well join the club," I said.
"He's a traitor on top of everything else. Fought for the British in 1812!" she said.
"In 1776, too, " I added.
"I heard King George offered to make him Earl of America," she said. "He had somewhat larger designs. He wanted to be King. And he has not given up these wishes. He has a robe, crown and scepter ready when the day finally comes."
"It wouldn't surprise me one bit, Moel," I sighed.
"Lord God Jehovah!" she exclaimed. "This country would be one big Texas Hellhole of Harry Halbert ever controlled it!"
"But he does control it," I said.
"Not yet he doesn't," she said, triumphantly. "No matter what johnnie-come-latelys like you think."
I started to try to persuade her to join our side in the war. She knew what I wanted. She cut me off before I got started good.
"I hope you all destroy each other," she said firmly.
I stared at the steam rising from the spout of a teapot sitting on a small electric stove for a while and then turned to go.
"I have nothing against you, Varnado," Moel said. "You are still decent. Noble. As much as a monster can be. But that thing Halbert is Beyond Redemption. Ultimately, for the good of the whole world, he will have to be destroyed."
"I'm sure the world will appreciate your concern," I said.
"Varnado, you will be the first male Vampyre to enter and leave my inner sanctum alive," she said, folding her arms. "I thought you might appreciate knowing that."
I went to see Blue next.
She was the closest thing to a road dog (homie, ace boon) that I had in the Vampyre Nation. We was almost as tight as I had been with Old Man Billy Witherspoon.
Blue. Think of Ving Rhames playing Don King in "Only in America", but way more loud, funny and aggressive.
I met her in Mother's. It was a Vamp joint; that is, it was a place that catered to Vamps and those who wanted to get Vamped On.
Mother's was dark. Nobody was in there but Iago, the giant, skull faced, high yellow bartender, Ms. Blue, and me.
Iago was standing behind the bar polishing a glass as always.
Blue was sitting at a corner table, back to the wall, so she could see everybody who came in the door. Her money hand was long and her Vamp hand was strong.
"Say, you ain't got that son of a bitch…" she started.
"Lord Moe ain't with me, Blue," I said, sitting down.
"Good thang!" she said. She was puffing on a big, fat cigar. "Good thang for you and good thang for him. I'd hate to have to fuck a motherfucker up in here."
Don't you just love her already?
She was wearing a navy blue three-piece suit with white pinstripes, white shirt, white tie, blue and white spectator shoes and a blue derby.
"Style for days, sister," I told her.
"I don't need yo' raggedy ass to tell me dat," she said, blowing smoke rings in my direction. "Whatchoo be hangin' wit' dat jive, ofay motherfucker Halbert for? You know he owned slaves? There's plenty of Blacks to Vamp wit'."
"I'll paraphrase Miles Davis in reply, girl," I said. "I mean you no disrespect, but let's be real here. Present company included—if there was any Black Vamps who could Vamp tough as Lord Moe, I'd be with 'em yesterday!"
"Old Man Witherspoon could," she said.
Old Man Witherspoon was a sensitive subject with me. I started trying to recruit her for the war but she cut me off at the pass.
"Ain't interested in joinin' no white man's army," she said. "Specially no double dealin' serpent like Halbert. You know he aided both sides during the Civil War? I mean, whuzzup wit' dat?"
"He wanted the Union and the Confederacy to fight themselves to an exhausted standstill, and then he planned to step in and take over. Even if you are disgusted with his lack of principles, you have to admire his cunning."
"Somebody like that cain't be trusted!" she spat.
"I know that. But I ain't gotta trust him. This is the hand I got dealt. I gotta see how it plays."
"Who woulda thought you'd wind up bein' a housenigga for Lord Baltimore," Blue sniffed. "A strong young brother like you. This is sad as Kathy Buonarotti's funeral."
She was talking about the precocious little girl, locally famous as a model and singer, who had died suddenly and mysteriously a few weeks before. The whole community, human and monster, was shook up about it.
"Why did that little girl have to die, Blue?" I blurted.
"Why you brining' that up at a time like this?" Blue asked.
"You brought it up," I replied.
"Yeah. I did, didn't I?" she said. The rough tough monster sat there a while, puffing on her cigar, lost in thought behind the swirling tobacco smoke.
"Why does anybody have to die, Varnado?" she said finally. "Tomorrow ain't promised to a livin' ass, man or monster. As far as I can see, when you gotta go, you gotta go."
"It seems like the whole world has gone crazy since then," I said.
"It may seem that way," Blue said. "But it has always been crazy. Maybe it just took an event like that to make you realize it."
"So, you are going to sit out the war, then?" I asked.
"I ain't said shit about sitting nothing out," Blue said. "You know that ain't me. When it's on, it's ON! If the Guhl start any shit with me, I will be the one to finish it, and you can take that to the bank. But I will fight alone, or with those I trust to watch my back, and not with that motherfucker Halfass, or Halibut, or whatever he be callin' himself right now. Beyond Redemption! That's what he ought to call hisself!"
"Is there such a thing, Blue?" I asked.
"As what?"
"As Redemption?"
"Sheeit, Nigga. You gone way too deep for me. Hey, boy! Quit polishin' that same ol' glass and get us two Henneseys over here before I have to kick you in yo' ass!"
When I left Blue, my head was spinning and not from any liquor.
Though I hadn't bought into Lord Moe's "Vampyre General" scam I sincerely thought it was in our best interest to pull together in the face of the threat of war. But how could we? We were too individualistic, too see in our ways, to ornery, stubborn, mistrustful and jealous to work together.
In that respect, though monsters, we were human. All too human.
Lord Moe was the problem, I told myself. The others hated and feared him too much. However, only he had the power the knowledge and prestige to lead us…
…except for Vasquez. Yes. Vasquez was a Vamp even more ancient and skilled than Lord Baltimore. Vasquez might unite and lead us.
He hadn't even been seen, though in many years. And it was useless to search for him. You did not find him. He found you.
Discouraged, disheartened, I sought refuge. A place of relaxation. A place where I often go to relax and think.
I got on a city bus.
Editors Note: Special thanks to St. Louis novelist & VC E-list member Chris
Hayden for sharing his upcoming book with VC Magazine. A Vampyre's Blues:
The Passion OF Varnado is being released October 16, 2004 from Door of Kush
Publishing. It may be ordered online thru Amazon.com at :
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0971201943/qid=1088015696/sr=8.
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