Always the Vampire

“Lia,” Saber said, “you told us last night that the Void won’t die on its own. I know I’ve seen the Void in places I haven’t seen Starrack. The question is, will the wizard show up at the festival with or without his pet?”


“What you likely saw was the residue of the Void, Saber. The trails of the slug, as it were.”

“Trail of the sludge in this case,” I muttered.

“However, it is my opinion that Starrack keeps the Void close by so it may do his bidding.”

“Good, that helps.” He took a deep breath. “We’re at the part of the attack plan where we wing it. First, if you sense or spot Starrack or evidence of the Void, communicate their locations immediately.”

“Cesca and I will dance when we know Starrack is nearby, whether other dancers are on the floor or not.”

Saber nodded. “I’ll slip off to the garage while you two hook our fish.”

“I’ll start siphoning their energy in sips as soon as I sense them, and then we’ll reel them in and up to the roof.”

“How do you propose to attack Starrack once you get him there?” Cosmil asked.

“With everything we’ve got. Triton can do his dolphin-call thing, Cesca will suck energy, and if you’ll supply me with some of those diversionary bombs, I’ll keep him busy defending himself.”

“I will make enough for each of you to have some.” Cosmil looked at the aerial shots of the roof. “You must stay spread out and keep moving so you will be harder to hit with magick.”

“We could run a weave formation like in basketball,” I offered. “Work our way toward Starrack so we can whip the amulets on him.”

Triton gave me an incredulous look. “Basketball?”

“Hey, I had to have PE credits beyond surfing to get my GED.”

Saber turned a snort into a cough. “Cesca’s right about advancing on Starrack so you two can take him down. We’ll practice that tonight.”

“So, let me review this,” Triton said, ticking points on his fingers. “We get Starrack to notice us, if he’s there. We lead him to the parking roof. We run basketball plays to dodge his magick, advance on him in the process, and then hit him with the amulets.”

“You forgot the part where we blast him with our unique skills and the magical bombs,” I said, “but, yeah. That’s the plan.”

“I hope to hell this works.”

Training was intense, sweaty, and rewarding. Just as the night before, my pool of power swirled and bubbled and flowed through every muscle, making me stronger with each exercise.

First, we practiced telepathy. Next, Saber and I taught Triton the weave formation, with Pandora taking the role of Starrack.

“Just run in a figure-eight pattern as you move toward Pandora,” I told him more than once.

Bless his heart, basketball was clearly not Triton’s sport. I could only hope that Starrack wasn’t fast and that the Void was, indeed, a slug, because Pandora clearly ran rings around us.

After a break, we played dodge the energy balls again with Cosmil alone pitching hard and fast, and slinging cross throws he hadn’t tossed the night before. He landed harmless hits, but I was pleased to realize that we evaded well over half of the bolts he threw. Maybe that’s because we caught on to his tell—he twitched his shoulders in the direction he threw, just before he let ’er rip.

“Watch Starrack for his tells,” Saber said when we called a halt. “He has to have at least one. Everyone does.”

Our final workout of the night was a spectator sport for Cosmil, Lia, and Saber. They sat on the porch steps while Triton and I danced to music he’d downloaded to a CD. As the lively song beat from the speakers in Triton’s truck and he took my hand, the years rolled away. I saw us as we’d been the last time we’d danced together.

There had been a party, a wedding, as I recalled, and we’d been sixteen. Old enough to know better, but mischievous enough not to care if we made a small scene. The people of the Quarter would be forgiving. They’d witnessed our escapades since our childhoods and still expected us to marry.

We danced then as we did now, on the grass under the stars. Fellow dancers, dressed in their best homespun clothes, took shape in my mind’s eye, all of us in a line but moving in a large circle as we moved through the patterns of the dance. Then Triton squeezed my hand, and we broke from the “line” to execute our own steps. He dipped and leaped and slapped his feet, showing off for me, the maid he was impressing. I skip-stepped toward him then away, twirled, and pretended to drop a handkerchief. And then he caught my waist to swing me in a circle. The big no-no move that had put Triton’s mother in a fit for weeks.

In the last stanza, we rejoined the “line,” and the dance came to a breathless close. Triton caught me in his arms and twirled me around, chanting, “We still got it.”

On the porch, Lia applauded, Cosmil nodded his approval, and Saber grinned. Thankfully with not one sign of jealousy.

“That ought to get the attention you want.”

“Let’s just hope it gets Starrack to fall into our trap.”