Most Texans remember the Blizzard of ’73, hell, it’d be pretty hard to forget for the northern part of the state; just came out of nowhere and dumped over 3 feet of snow in a little under 6 hours. Still, it was January, and all the fields were fallow for the winter, but there was a significant loss of livestock and a few people died. Later, the weather-folks would joke and say that in Texas, even the snow’s larger than life, the rare times it falls.
So maybe things are that simple, but maybe they’re not. ‘Cause on January 6, 1973, while most people were huddled up in their houses waiting out the storm, there was one little girl who just couldn’t wait to get here. So, there was Max Black, former New York City cop turned small-town sheriff, and there was his wife Cassidy Jean, and the other five kids, of course, and here was a sixth one coming. There was nothing to do but take her out to the barn where the all the Pasteurization equipment was and boil lots of water. It took a long time, this birth, but suddenly there was a tiny baby girl just a’scremin’ along with the wind howling outside. Max named her Belinda LeAnn Black.
So the Lord giveth, and that all-knowing bastard taketh, too. See, in 1973, there wasn’t 911 yet, and there was a blizzard on, and Cassidy Jean was hemorrhaging and there wasn’t nothing to do but boil more water and make her comfortable. Yep, a lot of people remember the Blizzard of ’73, but none more than Max Black and his six kids, because ‘Cass’ Black, local up-and-coming country singer and secretary to Phillip White, Public Accountant, bled to death in the family’s dairy barn.
But ya know, as much as you hear about dead-beat dads and corporate hack fathers, a pappa can love his kids an awful lot. He tried hard, Max did, especially with his youngest, who everyone took to calling Billie Lee. It was a tight little family there, Max, Tommy, Steven, Chrissy, Emma Sue, Elliot (after Max’s father), and Billie Lee. All those kids went to college, even though Steven joined the navy after two years, and Emma Sue married at age 21. But now, see, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Max Black loved the Wild West. He’d watched every single Western that was on, once his daddy bought a TV set, back when they first came out. Even went as a cowboy for Halloween for five years straight. It was no surprise to anyone, then, when the young policeman, went down to Texas for a week’s vacation once, and came back in love with the land and a young lady named Cassidy Jean Lewis. Max stayed in NYC for another year before they married, and then it was the year after that when he turned in his badge and took his wife and baby son to Texas to live. The job as sheriff’s deputy was easy to get, given his training, and two years later they inherited Cassidy’s grandfather’s old dairy farm, where they made their permanent home.
When Billie Lee was seven, her father had been the sheriff of Braxton County for at least five years. And it was one day, that she and her big brother Tommy walked down to the station to wait for Max’s shift to be done. Tommy, who was 16 at the time, was listening to Roger, the desk clerk, tell about the ten pound trout he caught up Mayer’s Creek, and didn’t notice his little sister wander away. Billie Lee found her way to the station’s small firing room where her daddy was doing some target practice. With the ear-guards on, he didn’t hear her come in, and it was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw her pick up a gun from the counter.
Like lightening, he dropped his own gun and in one fluid move gabbed the police issue from his daughter’s hands. Still shaking, he slapped her in the face.
“Never, never touch that! A gun is not a toy, do you understand? That could have been loaded, it could have killed you or it could have killed me!”
In shock from her daddy actually hitting her, Billie Lee nodded, a tear slipping down her sweet face. There was a tense silence in the firing room as she continued to cry softly.
“Look here, pumpkin, I know you want to be like your dad, but you have to be careful. Never pick up a gun unless you intend to shoot it.”
Sniffing, she nodded again.
“Here now, no more tears. Go run and get that box over there,” Max said, fetching another pair of ear-guards.
Little Billie Lee dragged the wooden crate over to the shooting stall and Max lifted her up onto in, fitting the guards as best he could around her small head. Then, standing behind her, he pointed his gun at the target.
“Ok, now you put you hands on mine and move the gun to where you want to shoot and say fire when you want me to pull the trigger. We’re trying to hit that circle way down on the wall, ok?”
“A’ight, daddy,” came the young Texan drawl.
Squinting at the target, Billie Lee slowly aimed and then closed her eyes. “Fire!”
Max shot, keeping his arms rigid to absorb the kick-back of the recoil. He’d been doing the whole thing just to humor his daughter, but didn’t his eyes bug out when he realized ‘they’ had hit a perfect bulls-eye.
“Well, now, that was a good shot. Want to try it again?”
“Uh-huh, that was just like in’a movies,” and Billie Lee grinned, showing the space where she’d lost a front tooth a week before.
“But remember, in the movies everyone shoots everyone else but we know the actors don’t die. In real life, it’s very different. When you shoot someone, they really do die.”
“Ah know. Like crim’nals, an’ that time the President got shot at.”
As most tell it, Billie Lee directed Max to hit three straight bulls-eyes before he went back into the ammo closet and dug out what he called a ‘pygmy rifle’ but the rest of the Texas deputies called a sharpshooter. It was small enough not to be unwieldy in little hands and also light enough that the recoil wouldn’t break a child’s wrist. While she ran off to buy a cracked gumball from the old faded dime machine in the lobby, he cleaned, oiled, and loaded the gun.
“Ok, now. Stand on the block like before, but this time you’re going to shoot. Here, put this hand under the upper barrel and this hand goes around like this, no, put your first finger on the trigger and your thumb wraps around on top. You got it, now the butt rests on your shoulder. See that nub on the muzzle? That’s the sight. Line up the sight with where on the target you want to hit.”
Tossing her head to throw her blonde hair behind her back, she closed an eye and aimed. “Shoot now?”
“Whenever you want, pumpkin.”
Billie Lee fired, and that was it for the center of the target. Her daddy just stood there, amazed as he watched his baby girl in a rifleman’s stance, body contracting naturally to absorb the kick-back. He flicked a switch on the wall, bringing the target across the room so he could pin up a new one. While it was moving along the track, he stuck his head out into the hall.
“Hey, you all! You’ve got to see this!”
Roger ambled into the room, followed by Tommy and Deputy Allen Swift.
“Sheriff, ha’en’t I told ya time an’ time again, it ain’t ‘you all’, it’s y’all. If’n it takes me twenty years, I’m gonna break that city talk outta you,” the older man said, leaning against the wall.
“What’s up, Max?” The deputy was a young, no nonsense kind of man from a military family.
As the sheriff was about to answer, Tommy had seen Billie Lee with the gun and yanked it from her.
“L’il Bit, ya oughten’t to be playin’ with that!”
“Hey, give’at back! Daddy a’eady lemme shoot it a few times!”
“Give it back, Tommy,” Max said as he attached a new target and sent it back towards the far wall, “oh, and you’re grounded this weekend.”
“Huh? Fer what?”
“For letting your little sister wander off where she could get hurt. I thought I told you to watch after her.”
“Aw nuts, ah was! Ain’t mah fault she won’t stay still.” and Tommy angrily shoved his hands deep in his pockets and leaned against the wall with Roger.
“Now, watch this. Go ahead, pumpkin, show them what you can do.”
While Billie Lee aimed again, Allen took Max aside. “You’re the sheriff and I trust your judgement, but, isn’t she a bit young for all this?”
The taller man held up a hand and watched his daughter. Again, she shot three times, taking out the bulls-eye of the target. Roger whistled and nodded, and even Allen clapped.
“Right shootin’, Miss Belinda. There ya go, Sheriff, a reg’lar Annie Oakley,” the desk clerk chuckled as he shuffled back out to his post.
That was the week they got Billie Lee’s vision checked, and found that it was quite a hitch above average. That was also the week Max bought his daughter her first gun, and I guess that was the beginning of it all.
“Oh, Billie! Now we’re gonna be eaten by lions!” Minnie Sue Watson bawled as the two girls stood in the middle of the forest.
“Hush up, then! If’n ya keep carryin’ on like that all o’ the lions an’ all will come out from their caves an’ eat us,” the other L’il Lonestar Girl, 2nd Rank, answered.
“C-cain’t ya shoot ‘em with yer gun?”
“Ya big monkey! My daddy don’t let me go bringin’ my guns places, that’s dangerous! Anyhow, once Miss Sally does a count an’ sees we’re missin’, she an’ all the troop’ll come lookin’ fer us.”
The heavyset girl kept sobbing and sat down against a tree. The late afternoon sun filtered emerald through the canopy of leaves above them and it was comfortably cool in the shade. Billie Lee shoved her hands in the pockets of her L’il Lonestar Girl uniform pants and walked over to her troopmate. They’d ended up being Buddies for the fieldtrip because no one had wanted Minnie Sue for a partner and Billie Lee had been the last to arrive on account of her brother’s car having a flat on the way to the troopleader’s house.
“Look here, Miss Sally always says if’n yer lost, you should pray an’ sing hymns so’s God’ll hear you an’ soon you’ll be found.”
Minnie Sue looked up, her face still red from crying. “You think so?”
“Yeah, ‘course I think so. My daddy says my mom’s up in Heaven with Jesus an’ when I need help or I’m in trouble, she sees and asks God real nice if’n he’ll help me. Daddy says Jesus is like yer big brother who loves ya even if’n yer bad sometimes, an’ His dad is just like’n anybody’s dad an’ always forgives ya.”
“Nuh-uh. My daddy don’t forgive nobody, most when he’s drunk.”
Billie Lee sat down Indian-style beside her friend. “I don’t think God gets drunk.”
“Does He give Jesus a whuppin’ when He’s mad?”
“I don’t think he does that neither.”
“Yer right, Billie. Maybe we should pray an’ sing that song from church ‘bout bein’ lifted up the mountain. We’re in the mountains now, right? So’s maybe God’ll hear us an’ lift us up off the mountain an’ back home.”
And the two little girls sang through the hymn a few times before Sally Werner, the troop-leader, and the rest of the troop found them. No fool, Miss Werner, a kindergarten teacher, knew that singing would take a child’s mind off being lost, and their voices could be used to find them in the forest or somewhere like a shopping mall. Billie Lee Black went home that evening and her father had made sloppy joe’s for himself and the children, then they watched a western on TV. Minnie Sue Watson went home and her mother was smoking pot with a boyfriend when her father came home drunk and threw the boyfriend through a window, then beat and raped both his wife and daughter.
After a few years, it got to be that you couldn’t pick up a newspaper in Braxton County without reading about some tournament or exhibition the sheriff’s daughter had been in or won. In fact, the governor even came by in ’86 to cut the ribbon on a new reading center that some of her winnings had helped build. That was after she won the Junior Miss Annie Oakley for the fourth time at age 13. There was some talk around about her trying out for the US Olympic team when she got old enough, but Max never did go for that, said he wasn’t gonna put all that pressure on a child.
It’d be fair to say she didn’t compete as much during high school, ‘cause she got into the university on a full academic scholarship. And wasn’t Max and his brood fit to bust over their young’un, when she graduated four years later, cum laude, with dual degrees in Sociology and Woman’s Studies. Pretty, smart, and in love with Bubba Ray Wilkins, one of the half-backs from the football team. The way I heard it, they were planning on calling it marriage about the time Billie Lee joined up with star billing on Cyclone Cy’s Wild West Performing Show, about a year out of college.
Then, see, she vanished for a few months, heard she was over in Europe or something. A lot of people assumed it was a torrid affair with some foreigner, but not Bubba, no, he kept saying she was with some friend of her grandfather’s, and she’d be home soon. He was right, ‘cause sure enough there she was eventually, practicing at night at the firing range. Well, then came the part that just about broke everyone’s heart. Bubba turned up murdered, all cut up and robbed. No wonder about who done it, everyone knew it was one of the Mexican drug gangs that the feds kept chasing further and further north.
Oh, but that poor girl was hurting. We knew, because she couldn’t even show up to his funeral, peaceful though it was, with the blue sky and all, like the sun was shinin’ just in Bubba’s honor, or something. Billie Lee disappeared again for about a year and a half, then showed up again in Houston, where she’s been living ever since. Still sends her daddy letters with all she’s up to, and he puts ‘em up on the cork board at the station for anyone who wants can come over and look. It’s not like she’s just Max’s daughter, in a way, it’s like she’s all of our’s daughter. Although, I heard talk she up and moved again, east this time. Ah well, that’s all this old whiskey-hound knows.
Claude Le Roi D’ors was born in a French provincial estate in 1323. He was raised with an eye for finer things, which led to his embrace into Clan Toreador in 1343. Hoping to avoid trouble with local suspicions, his sire had them both torpored in 1350 and kept and protected in a Nosferatu warren. However, that warren was raided in 1540 by Clan Tremere and its population destroyed. Henri Juliet, curious, procured the vitae to raise them, and afterwards they settled in Milan, where Claude lived until 1702, when city politics forced him to arrange transport to England.
Ultimately becoming Toreador Primogen in London, Claude changed his name to Charles Dorne and lived an easy life. In 1891 he went on safari with a Brujah friend and met Eli J. Lewis, a mortal from Texas, who Charles took a liking to and followed his family for years. A young Toreador, angered over a refused embrace, burned down one of the havens of the Prince of London, who in turn purged the clan from his city. Charles became Claude again and moved to Paris, where he continued to live.
Eli J. Lewis spent a few years in Europe before returning to the United States. One of his sons, Cyrus, married in 1902 and a son was born later that year. That son, Joseph, married in 1920, with twins, Lilly and Jonathan, following in 1921. In early 1942, Jonathan married Elizabeth Rawlings before enlisting to fight in WWII, resulting in Cassidy Jean being born near the close of that year. Jonathan Lewis died in France in 1944 and in 1965, his daughter married Max Black of New York. 1973 saw the birth of their sixth and final child, Belinda LeAnn Black, and Cassidy Jean’s death. By 1996, Billie Lee was out of college, engaged to Bubba Wilkins, and touring Texas as a member of Cyclone Cy’s Wild West Performing Show. 1996 was also the year that Claude Le Roi D’ors decided to check up on his little ‘pet family’ and visited the United States, in particular, the Lone Star State. Nearly 700 years of history were about to coincide with one moment of fate.
“So, what’re we gonna do ‘bout furniture?” Bubba asked idly, taking another bite out of his chili-dog.
He was sitting on a bench outside the Tastee Freeze on Highway 109, and Billie Lee was lying beside him with her head on his lap, watching the sky and occasionally sipping her soda. It was a Friday afternoon, January 7th, and in the mid-60’s, which to a Texan is jacket weather. Any passer-by would have seen the handsome young man, dirty brown hair starting to outgrow a crew cut, strong jaw line, broad shoulders, trim build, and eyes to die for. Lying on him was the young woman, slim and curvy, cowboy hat perched on her knees and her dusty blonde hair free.
“Well, I been thinkin’ ‘lot ‘bout that,” Billie Lee replied, “there’s the stuff I got, which isn’t a lot, an’ there’s your two chests of drawers. But I got an uncle, my mother’s cousin, an’ he lives down near Lubbock, an’ he makes wooden furniture. Bet he’d give us a decent price on some stuff.”
“Huh,” and he nodded.
“Don’t worry though, soon as we’re hitched we’ll start lookin’ fer a house. I know that’s been weighin’ on your mind, hasn’t it?”
“Can’t say it hasn’t, darlin’.”
Billie Lee sat up. “Shoot, it’s almost 5 already. Promised Cy I’d be there early for rehearsal.”
“A’ight, I’ll drop ya off at the arena ‘fore I start up for Bryers.”
“Bryers?”
Bubba stretched and stood. “Yup. There’s a physical therapy place up there looking for another specialist. Got an appointment, and if I get it, it’ll be a bit better money than at the center here.”
She nodded, tossing her empty soda can into the trashcan a few feet away, and stood. For a moment the tearing pain twisted her midsection, and it was all she could do not to cry out. As it was, a hand went reflexively to her stomach and Billie Lee winced.
“Hon, y’all right?” Bubba was instantly beside her, a hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah, just ain’t been feelin’ so hot today.”
“Mebbe you should tell Cy you can’t perform tonight, go home an’ get some rest.”
Grinning to cover the fading traces of agony, she shook her head and started walking towards the truck. She’d made up her mind not to tell him yet. They’d be married in three months anyway, and then there’d be plenty of time to work on the family. Besides, why let him worry? The show would take a few hours, she could hit the market on the way home for some tea, and spend the rest of the night blissfully curled up. Easing into the passenger seat, Billie Lee relaxed and smiled honestly; a family soon, just her, Bubba, and the coming little stranger.
The show, all in all, went as well as it could have gone. There was a powerful thunderstorm building up the entire time, which spooked the animals, but fortunately didn’t break and soak the arena. Mitch was bucked from his horse and rolled to the side, taking applause for his maneuver but also breaking his ankle. The whole show seemed a bit…off, even if nothing major went wrong. After the crowd let out and Cy gave his wrap-up talk, Billie Lee just didn’t feel like going home yet. Maybe it was the storm still threatening to crash to earth, maybe it was that she wanted some more practice on the double-shot with mirror trick, but whatever the reason, she stayed behind and shot on the floor of the arena.
After about twenty minutes, Billie Lee became aware of a presence on the floor with her, and turned to see a handsome man, black hair almost falling in his eyes, dressed fashionably, watching her.
“Uhm, we’re closed for the night. Non-show folks ain’t permitted on the arena floor.”
“Oh, I do apologize, but, you’re Billie Lee Black, aren’t you?” His voice was soft and tempting, with a hint of feral ecstasy under it.
“Yup, ‘at’s what they call me.”
“Ah, you see, I knew your grandfather,” and he smiled, walking closer.
“That a fact?” she replied giving him what’s commonly called the ‘fish eye’. Though she went back to running through her tricks, eventually turning around again to see the strange man watching her, almost in some kind of trance. Ice spiked her gut and ran up her spine. He didn’t speak like a Texan, in fact, he’d had no discernable accent and he kept taking slow steps towards her.
“Hey now, don’t make me have to call security. How’s ‘bout you just get on yer way, a’ight?”
“You’re lying,” he nearly whispered in hypnotized monotone, “you’re the only one here.”
And he was beside her as if she’d been standing still. Billie Lee only had time to get off one shot, but they were show pellets, not bullets, and she was overwhelmed by his scent and presence so close to her. Instantly, his teeth were at her throat before she could wonder where her hands were and why they weren’t trying to stop him. That was the last thought of resistance she had, breathing staggered, as the pleasure numbed her and lasted for moment after moment in a place where time did not exist.
Her guns slipped from her hands and lay in the dust of the arena floor. There was a wonderful and powerful pounding, and as her eyes recorded the stormy night sky above she became aware that roar was her own heartbeat. There suddenly was no longer strength or gravity and she floated into lying in the man’s arms, then to the ground. Then, silence, beautiful and terrible, as the world spun away to blissful darkness and Billie Lee Black drew her last breath.
The pain brought her around, finally. She was curled up in a ball in her seat, the wide, spacious, almost-couch of her sire’s private jet. Yes, it was night, they were flying to France. She was dead. Belinda LeAnn Black had been attacked by the stranger from the arena, drained of life while she lay in the dust of the Wild West show arena, then born again in the sin of her sire’s blood. It was all over, everything was lost and she was a creature of evil. In her memory was the still hazy intensity of the man as he explained everything while they were sitting, in a car, perhaps?
The trance had worn off in her sleep; the very air no longer carried the electricity of millions of nuances and the patterns of simple things had ceased to amaze her as they had in those first few hours. Now there was only the pain, terrible, terrible pain. The sick fire pulsed from her mid-chest to thighs, begging tortured motion from her dying muscles. By strength of will alone, Billie Lee bit back a moan and the need to writhe in her seat. Measure by measure, she stood and shakily walked to the small bathroom at the back of the cabin. Her sire stared dreamily out the window into the night sky, seeing and hearing nothing.
First came the purging. Blood, bile, vomit, pieces of inner organs, all turning to blue ice in the bowels of the jet by the time she lifted her head from the toilet. Billie Lee shook horribly, sweating in both fever and fear, and watching that sweat turn from clear to rose on her skin. Then again, came the pain. Sobbing and choking, she curled into the fetal position on the bathroom floor as the spasms wracked her. And it was then, and only then, when one thought slit through everything else.
Yes, the baby. Bubba’s baby. Bubba’s child that he didn’t know about yet and would surely rejoice in when he found out, that little speck of life like a blip on a radar. What of that future boy/girl who would become Bubba Jr. (BJ to his friends) or Cassidy Jean (for Billie Lee’s mother)? Do vampires have babies? Does one feed them blood? For every mother who’s worried about falling in the shower, eating enough folic acid, or sleeping on her stomach, there’s never been one who’s thought to worry about the baby should she become the walking undead.
A terrible spasm nearly flipped her, and Billie Lee had the abstract thought of a caught fish, jumping desperately. Her face pressed into the carpet of the bathroom; it was gray, like the carpet of a mall or office building. It was thick and sterile and that was somehow very comforting. There was a piece of plastic a few inches from her face, one of those little universal annoyance tabs that held a tag to a piece of clothing. Abstract. Pain. Sweet…Jesus…make it…stop.
And then came the torrent. Blood poured from her and soaked her already ruined jeans, and she knew what was happening. Thunder after thunder expelled the things from her and it lay in a gruesome puddle on the now-red carpet of the bathroom on a jet, high above the earth. It was so tiny, like a person, but it squalled horribly in a way Billie Lee knew it should not be able to. It wasn’t that far along that it should be as big as it was, but also shriveled and deformed; the price of the slow loss of life to its mother. And then, then it just died.
After a time, perhaps a half an hour in fugue, Billie Lee picked the thing up and flushed it down the toilet, dragging her bloodied form back to the seat across from her sire.
September of 1996 was a beautiful month in Allyons, France. The vineyards were working on their last harvest, full, luscious yellow-green grapes so ripe the scent of them made the late afternoon air heavy. The sunset washed the fields and roads of the provincial city golden as the old men smoked and talked and the old women gathered to watch a popular British drama dubbed into French. C’est un bon vie, they remarked to each other, Par Deiu, tout d’un vie, si on peut vivre, c’est bon. (It’s a good life, by God, all of one’s life, if one can live it, is good.)
The salon of Claude Le Roi D’ors was gaining popularity that month due to a feud with Garbon, the city’s Keeper of Elysium. ‘It’s all because I refused to sleep with him, you see.’ Claude told any who would listen. All in all, the whole affair was amusing, even more so than last month when he’d introduced his gauche little childe, that regrettable American girl. Not many took notice of her now that Amilie had taught her to keep her mouth shut in public. And what Amilie Coques Saint-Jacques wanted, it would happen. That was why everyone knew the neonate didn’t have long to live and all wondered when the grande dame of the salon and Claude’s lover would finally have it done.
For this reason as well as the feud, most of the city’s population was in attendance for Elysium on the third Saturday of the month. Even the Prince, the Spaniard Alejandro of the Ventrue, was there, sipping Claude’s rich blood wine and making soft and dangerous conversation. The minor harpies and gossips grinned in savage glee when Amilie and the neonate went into a back room to ‘talk’, and many were shocked that she was going to do the deed herself. However, they emerged a few minutes later, and nothing seemed to have happened, so, disappointed, attention once again returned to Claude vs. Garbon. That became at once interesting when the latter entered the room and the slings and barbs began.
Not many noticed, then, when Alejandro began to grow pale, even more than he already was, and then finally gave a great cry as he fell forward, staked from behind. As all stopped, motionless, the city’s Primogen all, one by one, crumpled to husks and fell to the marbled floor. Claude was aghast, and like the others, backed against the wall. No one was prepared then, when the little neonate ran into the room carrying a bucket of what smelled to be common pig’s blood and tosses its entire contents over Mdm. Saint-Jacques.
What happened directly after is hard to say, as everyone remembered it a little differently. Most agree on the elements of the blood-soaked Toreador shrieking curses at the childe who leapt through an expensive, authentic whole-wall, 17th century style window and took off at high speeds through the darkened fields. Some others cite brief flashes that coincided with the splattering blood, while at least a few insist that it was moments after that Alejandro stood, the stake having mysteriously dissolved, rather that the status quo of guests that insist someone must have pulled it out and pocketed it.
The Prince, having recovered himself and healed within a moment, waved off speculations that the neonate was responsible. The Primogen were all still ash, and he insisted that such complex sorcery was quite beyond one barely six months old. There was a larger conspiracy, and it just happened that the unfortunate event distracted everyone enough for the childe to pull off a bit of foolery that before would have been instantly deadly. As it was, to soothe the will of the hysterical Amilie, he declared the weeping Claude’s childe exiled from Allyons, although, he added, the scourge was bound to have her by dawn.
But, the scourge, the Gangrel Rascalè Minuit, was already dead, killed the night before by a lupine near the northern border of the ‘city’. Going from town to town, crossing fields in the dead of night and feeling all the world like a character from a WWI novel, Billie Lee managed to reach Paris. All in all, what with the enemies she’d made in Allyons, it took her a full six months to get back to Texas again. A lot happened in Europe, however, a lot that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Bubba when she finally returned.
Those thoughts occupied her most nights. After learning that her kind were all over the world, Billie Lee had contacted the Prince of Dallas for presentation and showed up occasionally for Elysium. Target practice down at the shooting range was now her primary nightly activity. She’d known the owner for years, so it was no problem convincing him to let her use the place at night, provided she kept it clean and locked up when she was done.
Closing an eye, she concentrated and focused on the target, a talent for perception that had only grown after her embrace. That and the speed, and thank God for the speed, she reflected before firing. Billie Lee sighed, unconscious of the fact that it was an unnecessary physical action now, and reloaded. Bubba was worried about her, she knew it. He probably figured she was having an affair or didn’t love him anymore. They couldn’t move in together without him discovering what she was and she didn’t have the mental powers of the elders to control him.
That was the crux of it, actually. She didn’t want to control him and she didn’t want him to get hurt by being involved with her. The fact that she couldn’t tell him any of it made the problem even bigger. They’d fought that evening when he came to her apartment after work; they’d fought bad. Firing again, Billie Lee decided she couldn’t stand it any more, and that she’d tell him the next night. Either he’d believe her or he wouldn’t, but she was trusting in him.
“Don’t you ever get bored of this?”
Whirling around, Billie Lee saw Rex, the Brujah whip, standing in the doorway, and she smiled. Rex had been embraced at middle age, but he’d never tell anyone how long ago, though by some of his mannerisms, she guessed him to be about 150 years old. His hair was gray-leaning salt n’ pepper, and his face rough but hard with wise black eyes; there was probably a bit of Indian blood in him somewhere. Dressed in all denim save for his white teeshirt, Rex reminded her of her father.
“I’m practicin’.”
“Billie-girl, you hit the bullseye every single time, what’s there to practice?”
She shrugged and turned away as Rex walked up next to her.
“It’s about your boyfriend, isn’t it?”
“Fiancée.”
“Look, you might not want to hear this, but it’s best that you hear it from a friend,” he paused, then waited for her to meet his eyes, “you should stop seeing him or wait until you’ve been in the city long enough for the Prince to grant you a ghoul, if you love him that much. But understand, it’s never easy for us to associate with mortals, especially ones we knew from that other life.”
“No. I can’t do either. I love him and I’m not gonna to just up and leave and break his heart. An’, a-an’ I can’t bring him into all o’ this,” and she resisted the tears starting to fill her eyes.
“Billie-girl, now, you have to listen to reason…”
Rex was cut off by the sound of a car crash outside, and they both bolted out of the building to find Bubba’s truck wrapped around a telephone pole and a small knot of forms over something on the ground. Eyes narrow, Rex pulled a stake out of his jacket and raced through the clear July night, yelling.
“Fire, Billie! For God’s sake, fire!”
She lifted her gun but for the first time in her life, hesitated. It was as if time condensed and made it impossible to move. What if one of them was Bubba, and she hit him? What if her aim wasn’t true?
Rex reached the throng and it burst as four people broke off in different directions. He leapt on the back of the closest one, grabbing its head and wrenching it horribly, then driving the stake in while the thing was on the ground. Billie Lee ran then too, towards one coming in her direction, dodging its grapple and pistol-whipping the man in the face. Like a shot, Rex planted a stake in that one but then straightened as a third figure nailed him with a savage kick to the lower back.
With a frenzied speed and power she wouldn’t have believed and a violence she didn’t understand, Billie Lee began to beat the woman, finally on top of her and slamming her head into the pavement. Blood covered both of them by the time Rex put a gentle hand on her shoulder, pulling her back and staking the vampire. Through the red haze, she saw the other three lying in a pile next to the smashed truck. There was also something else off to the side and it drew her.
“Wait, Billie-girl, don’t go over there!” but Rex’s cry fell on deaf ears.
The dark stain spread out slowly over the smooth black asphalt that Pete had put down the spring before. Fabric and flesh alike were shredded and the parts of a person that only a surgeon should see were visible to all now. The form was lying in an impossible position but its face was untouched and pristine. There was still a trace of shock in Bubba’s frozen open eyes, fixed forever staring up at the heavens. No life breathed in him, in the organic construct that only moments before housed a mind and soul.
After Rex had piled the staked bodies in the smashed truck and set it on fire to preserve the masquerade, he found Billie Lee still standing over the corpse, shaking tightly.
“All right now, we have to get out of here, Billie-girl. The cops’ll be here soon, once that fire gets going.”
She didn’t reply.
“There was gas leaking from his engine, see there, it’s all over. He’ll have to burn with it, but now it’s time to go.”
“I’ll kill ‘em.” Her tight voice belied the rose tears running down her cheeks, but her face was a mask.
Rex took her by the shoulders to face him. “They’re dead.”
“I’ll kill ‘em all. Everywhere.”
The older man nodded. “If that’s what you want, I’ll teach you how.”