Rhymes with Witch
Protect yourself, protect your friends if you had any. The only rule Grace ever really unlived by. And the government fucks knew who Deanna was. How they knew was anyone's guess, but the Council had always had long arms. Look at her, forty years dead, and they could still reach out and touch her. Maybe she should look into that.
She took the elevator up to the redhead's floor, the card Agent Rimes had given her burning a hole in her shirt pocket. Not good, not good, not good, this feeling like she was being followed, even if she wasn't. Made her itch.
Her knuckles made sharp contact with the wooden surface of the closed door, and she tried not to think about surveillance cameras and wire-taps while she waited. She'd walked into fucking Watergate, apparently. Hopefully she could walk out unscathed.
Where Grace was fueled with paranoia, Deanna was dead calm. A certainty had overtaken her sometime in the last three days, a conviction she adopted every several decades. It came with the introduction of the steam engine; the first flight by two brothers from Kittyhawk; a computer that could beat its maker from chess.
Change.
The redhead stayed one step ahead by sensing which way the wind blew and learning to adapt. Someone brought a knife to a fight, you brought a gun. (They just didn't make great films like The Untouchables any longer. It was all Miley Cyrus concerts and loosely-based 'ideas' from countless reality shows.)
So when the government decided they were interested in you, you took interest as well. Not that the vampire wasn't wary of the meaning behind the business card, but this Purvis person was a recruiter. If the government wanted her in a cage, they would've sent a platoon of Navy Seals without advanced word.
The knock against wood caught her attention and she casually strolled to the hotel room door, fully expecting a sweaty fat man in black.
Grace was not sweating, but she was twitchy. When the door opened, she offered Deanna a lopsided smile. "Hey," she said, letting out an unnecessary breath. "You got a few minutes? There's a...thing, or somethin'. These people..."
She plucked the card out of her pocket, showing off the official emblem of Homeland Security. "Looks like there's a brand-new sherriff in town. And they're lookin' to name names. They already had mine. And yours. Can I bend your ear a little?"
That cemented it for the redhead. There was a ... scrape in the back of her mind that maybe Katherine or Grace or hell, even her fucking nemesis Rhiannon was pulling a fast one. Nah, that wouldn't have been the Slayer's M.O. She was definitely someone who came at you fist first.
Nope. This was Real with a capital R.
"You mean this?" Deanna replied, showing her own card. "Seems they know more than just names."
Grace blew out another breath and nodded, rubbing the back of her neck with her unoccupied hand. "Yeah. The little girl I talked to said they've already had a sit down with somebody or other from the Council. That was how they knew who I am. Was."
She gave the older vampire a significant look, stuffed the card back out of sight. "They're talkin' about takin' the whole lid off, man. Everything, all of it. Vampires, werewolves, you, me, the whole thing. Registration, fer fuck's sake."
She scuffed one boot across the carpet, pointed aimlessly past Deanna's shoulder. "You got a drink in there? I could use a glass or seventeen of somethin'."
"The Council's involved?!" There was almost a squeak from the elder woman. She shrugged her head back. "Yeah, help yourself. And while you're at it, pour me one."
From zero to sixty and now past two fucking hundred in the blink of an eye. Recruiter. Right. You don't bring in both sides. That had clusterfuck written all over it.
"Maybe they're playing the odds," she continued, taking a seat. "See who blinks first."
"I dunno," Grace said, shaking her head as she crossed the room to pour bourbon into two large tumblers. "I dunno if they've reached out for anyone else yet. She, Agent Rimes, she said that they were looking for recruiters to sign on with the government as hunters. Like, a special program. What I know is..."
She stopped talking liong enough to knock her entire drink back in one gulp, and she poured herself a refill before carrying both glasses over to the couch where Deanna had seated herself. "What I know is, shit runs one way, and that's downhill. I don't know how easy avoidin' the mudslide is gonna be."
She took another slug of alcohol, more tightly wound than she'd been in months. Trust the Feds to screw up a perfectly good end of winter.
Deanna fingered the glass, cool and slender fingers traced the faint carving of the Wynn logo underneath. "You go to higher ground, or fashion yourself a boat, Grace."
She took a sip, unhappy that the taste was akin to water on her tongue. Even blood would be pale for her tonight. "Thing is, if what you said is true, they want hunters. That's what we do. Bad enough we've got to contend with Slayers. Do you want the Army on your ass too? Where's safe, then? Unless it's in plain sight?"
"It gets funnier." Grace's voice racheted down in volume if not in intensity, and she rotated the glass around and around in one pale, strong hand. "'Cause this...registration thing...they're not askin', I don't think. They're tellin'. And if you don't, they put you in quarantine. Sequester ya away in a cell or somethin'."
The younger vampire was looking down into the contents of her glass instead of at her friend, watching the amber liquid slosh back and forth. Wired. A little paranoid. Torqued.
"Reuben says he ain't gonna do it."
"How widespread?" Deanna knocked back the rest of her bourbon. "If it's DHS, then the heat could get intense in the fifty states. Means we might have to become Canadian. And I don't do well in touques and parkas. You ever see 'Thirty Days of Night', Gracie? That's the Great White North. With polar bears."
Two fingers caught a drop of liquid as it made an escape from the corner of the redhead's mouth. "Reuben won't do it. What about you?"
"I don't know. If its international or not, I mean. If it spread across the borders I can't imagine where I'd go." Grace was still examining the drink she held as if it was the most riveting thing she'd ever seen. She looked over at Deanna, meeting the other vampire's gaze with a rueful smirk.
"I been off the grid for almost forty years," she confided. "And just the mention of that changing makes me twitch. Like they're tryin' to make me live in the light when I'm not cut out for it." She drained half of the glass, then looked down into what was left.
"I could do it, I guess. I mean, it'd be good for business stuff. It's that man who's the problem."
The vampire gestured in the direction of the door. "And this is why I can't live with him, 'cause he don't want to listen to nothin'. I tried to explain the thing about being locked up, but its like he can't hear me. He says he ain't been human since the Depression, and he ain't gonna pretend now just because some suit wants it like that. Stubborn boy."
Deanna stood up and crossed over to the makeshift bar. With bottle in hand she walked back and poured Grace another drink. She clearly needed the courage.
"I've lived through several wars, prohibition, the Depression, the Revolution..." her voice trailed off a moment. "But one thing I won't do, is live in fear."
"I ain't scared of shit," Grace muttered, speaking to her fresh drink. "I'm adaptable, I could learn to do things differently, I just..." She broke off, took a sip, trying to nurse this glass instead of gulp it.
"He made me, y'know? He made me. How am I supposed to live with knowin' that this came down and I couldn't get him to go along or keep him safe 'cause he wouldn't?"
She was getting to it now, the thing that was causing her antsiness, the thing she never said out loud. "I hate to worry about anything when I don't have to. Makes me poor company."
Layers were peeled back. A better understanding of her the younger redhead. But also understandable; connections between sire and childe ran deep, no matter the distance.
Which made Deanna think of Victoria. What if the same situations played out in their lives? Though she'd pushed her youngest childe (forcefully) from the nest after Celine's second death, could she abandon the brunette should she end up incarcerated? She sure as hell didn't abandon her at Beowawe, even went so far as to suit up with the enemy to secure her girl's release. Would she do it again?
Hells yes, she would.
Well, that put a new wrinkle into an already over-worked thought process. "That's where we're alike, Gracie. We have a hard time leaving people we love behind."
Grace hunkered in a little further on herself, looking down at the toes of her boots. She was fractious and bad-tempered, quick to anger and prone to violence. Stubborn. But there was a thread between her and Reuben that had never frayed regardless of countless arguments or physical distance between them. A wholeness. She didn't want to know what it would feel like to have that thread cut.
"What are you gonna do?" she asked Deanna, indicating the redhead's own card. "I feel like I haven't seen you in ages, by the way, like since before New Year's. How were you before the shitstorm started threatening?"
"Beside myself." An honest answer, if incomplete. She wasn't always the most forthcoming when it came to things that involved family. "Turns out my first childe wasn't dead. We reconnected, Vicky got jealous. And after Celine managed to snare my favorite Slayer, she butted in and let the bitch go. Who then exacted revenge."
Now Deanna poured herself another drink.
"After, I broke ties with her. Haven't seen my youngest since. I wanted to tear up the city but..." Lost interest? Got depressed? Realized her anger wasn't so much directed at the brunette but herself?
"And yes, I'm ignoring your question about the shitstorm." Deanna downed the alcohol.
The younger vampire had darted a looked at Deanna at the beginning of the recitation before averting her gaze, trying to wrap her head about eh whole thing of it. Elegant, well-dressed Victoria committing such an act of delberate betrayal? And for Rhiannon? Grace frowned into her bourbon.
"You're havin' a worse time than me." Couldn't offer her sympathy because she doubted the redhead would tolerate it, but she felt like she had to say something. She looked at the bottle, noted with relief that it was still mostly full. They were going to need it.
"We're holdin' it together though, right? Another thing we've got in common, that we're tough and adaptable. That's something not even the Feds can fuck with." She risked a quarter of a smile, held up her glass in an offer of a toast. "Cheers."
"To bitches with fangs and attitude." Deanna clinked glasses. "And keen fashion sense."