No Dominion

– Vulgarity. Of course. The refuge of the weak-minded. Scoff if you like. But there is more.

The boys come back and begin replacing the furniture they had moved. She raises a hand and one of them brings a chair. She sits.

– Once the Hood has fallen. Once we have reclaimed our territory and these boys and their brothers and sisters know the security they have never known. The security that would have been theirs if the Secretariat had never bowed to those animals. Once that is secure, my attention will turn south, to our lands below 14th Street.

The room has been put back together. Two of the boys continue to stand watch over me while the others gather together the anathema and pack it in the briefcase.

– In fact, that project has already begun. Gradually, much as we did here, the anathema is being introduced. Which, I would imagine, is the reason you have come so far away from home in the first place.

She looks at me through her glasses again.

– Another thing.

The boys come over to the couch, one of them carrying the briefcase full of anathema.

– While in modest amounts anathema’s effects are essentially euphoric, larger amounts are quite agonizing, if not lethal.

She hands one of the boys the pint she’s been holding.

– It takes an experienced and steady hand to administer the perfect dosage to inflict that agony without inducing an undesired fatality.

The boy unwraps a clean syringe.

– But if done properly, such a dose is every bit as effective as the most savage torture.

He begins to draw anathema into the syringe.

– Minus the mess and inconvenience.

She holds up a finger. The boy stops filling the syringe.

She points at it.

– This, I believe, would be your ideal dosage. If I were to inject you with this, every muscle in your body would warm and relax. A slight sweat might break out over your face. The worries of your everyday life would cease to have weight. Music would fill your ears such as you have never heard before. Images would light the undersides of your eyelids. Shapes, colors. Fantasies, but also more concrete hallucinations. Communal visions that are shared by all who have experienced anathema. Visions that some would say prove conclusively the spiritual nature of the Vyrus. Though I am not among them. But perhaps you are, Mr. Pitt?

Again she lifts the glasses to her eyes.

– I have heard that you sometimes associate with Daniel and his followers. Are you one of them? I’ve long suspected that Daniel’s interests are not so ephemeral as he claims. It would not surprise me to discover that you are in fact his agent. Predo and Bird running you for their ends, but all the while, secretly, you are an instrument of Enclave concerns. It might be so. It might be so and you might not even be aware of it, Daniel being so subtle as he is. Would you care to have such visions? Unlock a deeper level of meaning within the Vyrus? You’ve been infected long enough to ask questions, haven’t you? The first years of infection being filled as they are with simply learning to cope, deciding if you want to live this life at all. The next several with learning the tools of survival. The next several with learning to fit in, to adapt to being infected in an uninfected world over the long term. And finally, if you have the endurance, the cleverness, some set of tools to keep you alive, you begin to ask questions. What is the Vyrus? What are the Vampyre? How long have we been here? Where did the Clans come from? Are there more of us out there in the world? How many? Do they all live as we do? And, of course: What am I?

She lowers her glasses and waves them at the syringe in the boy’s hand.

– This might hold answers for you. They would come with a price, naturally. You would arise from my couch with a new hunger, a second need. You would find yourself distracted from the hunt, contemplating how best to use your victim’s blood. Consume it? Or have another Vampyre infect it for you? You can’t use as anathema blood you’ve infected yourself, it will only make you ill. Nor can you use blood infected by the same Vampyre, not more than once or twice. You see how the complexities of this addiction multiply.

She points at the boy again. He pulls smoothly on the plunger.

She tilts her finger upward. He stops.

– With this amount, you will still be granted visions, likewise universal in their nature, but far more unpleasant. And accompanied not with warmth and relaxation, but muscles contracted so tightly they sometimes tear from the strain. Fever. Pain. In your bones. Particularly in the sternum, the spine, the hips, and the femurs. Odd, yes? And when it is over, you will be left not with the same addiction, but with one that demands these higher doses. An addiction that can only be sated through misery.

She moves her finger. More blood enters the syringe. Stops.

– With this amount, things become simpler. Agony. Harrowing phantasms. Blood at war with itself. And a lengthy, wracking, death.

The boy pulls the syringe free, wipes the needle. Offers it to Vandewater.

She takes it.

– Predo wants you. Knowing that, and knowing that I cannot afford to thoroughly alienate him, we can dispense with this dosage as an empty threat.

She presses the plunger, squirting a thread of the blood onto my chest. The smell burns my nostrils.

– Having done so, it only remains to decide.

She holds up the syringe.

– Will it be this? In which case I will save my questions until after you have recovered and are begging for further torture.

She holds her fingernail against the side of the syringe, indicating a smaller amount.

– Will it be this? In which case I will still hold my interrogation, waiting until you have suffered sweetly, and crave yet more sweetness.

She lowers the syringe.

– Or may I begin my questions now? Secure in the knowledge that you are aware I will not brook the barest shadow of a falsehood in your answers. Knowing you understand the price that will be paid.

And she shows me the needle again.

I rub my chin against my shoulder.

– Well, Mrs. Vandewater, it took you awhile to get there, but you finally managed to say, tell me what I want to know or I’ll fuck you up forever.

She waits.

I roll my eyes.

– I don’t know what you’re waiting for, I already told you once to fuck off.

There’s a knock at the door. One of the machine pistol boys answers it. He nods at Vandewater.

She sets the syringe on the tea table. The boy assisting her closes the briefcase full of anathema.

She stands.

– Of course, one of the components of anathema’s effectiveness as a weapon is its brief shelf life. It must be distributed immediately after it is harvested. This batch is meant for the Hood. And the courier is waiting.

She walks to the door.

– But not to worry, the dose in that syringe will last more than long enough to serve its purpose. In fact, a few minutes’ aging will make it much more effective.

She leaves, escorted by Briefcase Boy and one of the machine pistols.

I look at the syringe sitting on the table and then over at the machine pistol boy and the tongue slicer that remained behind. I look again at the syringe, secure in the knowledge that when the time comes, I will beg like a child to keep her from sticking it in my arm.

I’m a dead man. And not just in the way that I’m always sort of a dead man. Once I’m in Predo’s hands there will be considerably less talking and much more thrashing and questioning. And after that, I’ll get to see my first sunrise in a quarter century. That should be worth something, but I expect I’ll be distracted by the sensation of my eyelids melting. Being addicted to this shit will be the least of my concerns. Hell, the smart play here is to volunteer