There were six bunks in one room, five neatly made, one with a body under the covers, snoring. I smelled blood on him, but as he was still breathing, I figured he was a human blood-slave of the clan and said nothing. I didn’t have to like it, but I wasn’t here to rescue junkies.
Lockers were on one wall of the bunk room, a laundry on the other. A unisex bathroom was on one side of the hallway, a big storage closet across from it, and a tiny cubical marked SECURITY. Inside was a security console with six monitors, each flipping back and forth with different camera angles, viewing the house and grounds from multiple positions. One showed the street. They had seen me coming. They grinned at me, and I grinned back. “Nice setup.”
“It works,” Brian said. “Plus we had heard from the Rousseau and Desmarais security teams that a female biker was in the District. We talk.” I nodded, impressed. “Want sweet tea?” he asked, indicating a break room with minikitchen, table, chairs, sofas, recliners, and TV.
“That would be nice,” I said, on my best children’s home manners. I took a seat at the table while he got out glasses and poured tea, and Brandon went back to the security console, glass in hand. He was close enough to participate in the conversation, sipping, his chair at an angle, one eye on the screens, one on me. “Mind a few questions?” I asked, trying for girly and innocent, but not really fooling either twin, even after the silver bracelet incident.
“As long as they aren’t about the security precautions or systems of the clans, you can ask anything you want,” Brian said. The brothers had mellow voices with a strong Deep South accent, one I had heard only in Louisiana, spoken as if they talked through a mouthful of melting praline candy.
“Ask away,” Brandon said.
So I did. We drank cold sweet tea, which tasted fresh brewed, from good quality loose tea, not the tea dust called fannings in grocery store-quality tea bags. I asked about any recent changes in any vamps they knew—feeding changes, habitat changes, scent changes. The twins were an integral part of the vamp security community, which, I discovered, was a growing and lucrative business in cities with a city blood-master and vamps who were out of the closet. Not all of them were, even now with the improving vamp-human relations.
They volunteered info about social relationships, which clans were feuding, which vamps were entering and exiting affairs of the heart, which clans and individual vamps were having financial trouble, or gambling, or building too many blood-servant relationships, or too few, their habits, feeding times, and the emerging human donor systems that allowed vamps to feed without forming blood relationships. This new change bothered them the most.
I studied them as we talked, and my impression of their military backgrounds was reinforced. These guys were smart, and something suggested they were older than they looked. More like Vietnam War military. Or maybe even World War II. It was clear from their carefully controlled physical motions that they fed on vamp blood often enough to be fast. Not quite vamp fast, maybe not even Beast fast, but faster than any regular human.
I wanted to ask about it but that seemed rude. Like, “So, tell me. How often do you suck vamp?” No way to ask directly and still be polite, so I asked, “These human donor systems. Who sets them up?”
While Brian was pouring more tea, Brandon said, “We don’t know. It’s an Internet thing, like a call-girl site, but for blood donors. Blood for cash. If a vamp needs blood for an evening, he can message the site with contact info, city, cell phone, credit card, and restaurant or hotel where they want to meet. They’re in four cities in the United States: New Orleans, New York, San Fran, and LA. But it’s spreading. We hear that a new branch is opening in Nashville.”
“We’re trying to get a handle on who’s behind it,” Brian said. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing illegal in blood for money. Winos have been selling plasma for decades. And it’s great for vamps who want an occasional safe, fresh-meat snack, but as a permanent lifestyle it isn’t good for the vamp community.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because the blood-slave and blood-servant relationships are special. They give vampires stability,” Brian said. “Emotional, as well as personal and clan security.”
Brandon stood and scooted his chair so he could reposition and still see both the screens and me. He straddled the chair, resting his arms across the back. When he spoke again, it was the voice a master sergeant might have used instructing soldiers or grunts, a clipped and well-thought-out spiel, almost rehearsed. I suddenly had to wonder if the brothers had been watching for me, to tell me this. Since any reliable info on vamps was hard to come by I had to wonder why.
“Vampires,” he said, “are volatile at the best of times. The younger they are, the more high-strung, hot-tempered, impulsive, unpredictable, and capricious they are. Almost erratic.”