The Green Memory of Fear Read online

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2000, 2011 by B.A. Chepaitis

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  Dedication

  To the survivors: Sisters, brothers, friends, self.

  Quotation

  I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hated twin, but now I don’t know you as myself. I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters.

  You are not my blood anymore.

  —I Give you Back, Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses

  Prologue

  Home Planet—Manhattan, USA

  It was a muggy day in the city, and all around the smell of urine, the smell of hot tar was in the air.

  He paused in the street to stare up at a skyscraper, his eyes straining through the glare that bounced off the windows. This wasn’t the building he wanted, but it was near here. He sensed it in his skin, the remnants of a memory still palpable to him.

  The little girl at his side tugged at his sleeve. He looked down as if he’d forgotten her.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “Soon,” he said. “We’ll eat soon.”

  She scratched at her arm. She wouldn’t whine. She never whined. She had other ways of showing her displeasure. He reached for her hand and she let him take it, but she dragged her feet as they walked. He made a sound of complaint, but he didn’t slap her the way he usually would. That put her on alert, made her wonder what was wrong.

  They crossed 73rd street, went down three blocks and turned right. When they reached the building he wanted he stood in front of it looking up, holding the little girl’s hand. The people who passed by made no note of them. They were just two of the millions who lived or worked or walked in New Manhattan, just a small, rather mousy girl and a medium built, almost deliberately nondescript man in his early fifties. He ignored them too. He had other business to attend to. Someone he wanted to find. Someone who once lived here.

  After all these years he could still catch the scent of her, so specific and so telling. The scent of an empath. A girl child with something wild in her soul.

  He breathed it in deeply, and as he breathed, he remembered.

  He’d seen her during the marvelous wreck of the Killing Times in Manhattan, when murder was the only means left to create human connection, the last ritual act in a world gone spiritually dead. In a final desperate attempt to feel alive the people killed and killed and killed again. It was a beautiful thing to behold, an ecstasy of blood and triumph, and there was nothing like it before or since.

  While it went on he fed off it insatiably, growing ever more powerful. By the time he caught the scent of the empath girl he was as strong as he would ever be. Though their meeting was brief, his memory of it was precise and delicious to this day.

  Many years had passed since then. She would be a grown woman now. He wondered if she remembered him at all. If not, he would remind her when they met again.

  At his side, the little girl shifted from foot to foot impatiently.

  He gave her arm a quick jerk. “Quiet, child,” he said. “You need to know her, too. That’s why I brought you here.”

  She wiggled, pulling her hand from his, but he grasped her wrist and held her.

  “Look,” he said, pointing up. “She lived there. Can you smell it?”

  The girl turned her face up. “No,” she said.

  “Then be quiet and let me enjoy myself.” He closed his eyes and breathed in.

  She had been young and full of energy, her empathic gifts developed well beyond her years. She would be an implacable enemy, an invaluable ally, but that wasn’t the only reason he sought her. In all the time since then, she was the one scent he couldn’t define and had never found again.

  “I don’t smell anything except dog crap,” the little girl said.

  He ignored her, though he knew she was right. Here, where they stood, was nothing but his memory and crap. She’d been carried away in fire and the storm of time. He wouldn’t find her here, and the girl at his side would learn nothing more from viewing the past. They should move on.

  “Come, child.” He turned away from the building and walked down the street.

  “Are we gonna get some food?” she asked. “There’s hot dogs.” She pointed at a vendor.

  His face expressed distaste. “That’s not how we feed.”

  She was the most capable of all his children, and the most stubborn. She wouldn’t hunt. She refused to sex or be sexed. If he tried she clawed and bit and screeched abysmally. Threats of death were useless because she was entirely ready to die. But recently he’d found something more potent than death to sway her. He’d given her hope, in lethal doses, and that would ultimately make her do as he wished.

  “If you want to see her, you’ll learn to feed as I say,” he told her.

  “I want a hot dog,” she insisted.

  “What do you want more—a hot dog, or a mother?” he asked.

  She was sullen, silent. That, she understood.

  “If it’s a mother, pay attention,” he said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  The city, so full of energy, was the best place to feed and to sex. For today, however, he’d just feed. Though sexing was infinitely more enjoyable and the best source of food, immediately after it left him languid, indolent with pleasure, and he wanted to stay alert.

  As he walked with the girl he sniffed for food, and soon enough he bumped into a well-heeled, well-suited woman passing by. He grasped her arm and smiled at her. “Sorry,” he said.

  Her face went white and her breathing briefly ceased. He released her and she stood swaying, then righted herself.

  “Quite alright,” she replied, and walked on.

  He sighed. A small feed, but it worked.

  The little girl wrinkled her nose at him. “I want a hot dog,” she insisted. “With ketchup.”

  He put a hand to her head as if to pat it, then quickly grabbed her hair and jerked her back. When he released her she fell forward onto her knees. He bent down to her. An older woman with white hair and a kind smile stopped near them.

  “Do you need help?” she asked.

  He lifted his face and smiled. “She tripped,” he said.

  The woman instinctively reached out to the child. He put the girl’s hand on the woman’s arm, with his over it. She would feel the feeding whether she wanted to or not. This kind of energy was best for the kind of work he wanted from her. At his touch, the woman swayed, her pupils dilating. After a few seconds he released her. That would be enough.

  “Thank you,” he said to the woman. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” she said, looking a little dazed as she walked away.

  He turned back to the girl. Her face was mottled white and red. “I’m gonna be sick,” she said.

  “No,” he commanded, but it did no good.

  She gulped twice, then leaned over and retched on the sidewalk at his feet. People walking by looked at them, then away.

  “You’re disgusting,” he whispered while he held her hair back and pretended to be solicitous. “How will you find a mother if you can’t do the simplest thing I ask?”

  She sobbed, and he stepped away, waiting impatiently while her crying slowed and finally subsided. Then he grabbed her neck and squeezed. “Are you done, idiot?” he whispered.

  She nodded. He released her and they walked on. She was irritating, insolent, difficult, but she wasn’t entirely without sense. She’d cooperate in the end.

  Tomorrow they’d return to his house in Toronto. Tonight, while they were still in Manhattan, he’d show her how to bring him what he wanted, see if
she could get the job done. But for now he’d remember the days when the streets swelled with the stench of death, when so many of those bound to him ruled the city and stealing green from the bodies of children was as simple as a smile.

  And even if the girl would not feed, he would.

  He walked until he found an alley littered with garbage and stench. Here, they squatted down against a wall and waited for darkness, and his dinner.

  Planetoid Three—Toronto Replica, Zone 12

  Jaguar Addams walked in slow circles around her prisoner. He sat on the floor in the center of her circle, eyes glazed, mouth hanging open.

  “This is the easy part,” she crooned, the gold flecks in her green eyes glittering in the candlelight. “We’re just on the surface now.”

  He moaned softly.

  “Hurt?” she asked.

  His head moved up and down in something resembling a nod.

  “Good,” she said, and extended her hand, two fingers moving toward his forehead.

  She’d been working with this prisoner for four weeks and finally thought she could see an end in sight. He was a pedophile who strangled a girl while raping her. His wife found the little girl’s underwear in his jacket pocket and called the police. It was a straightforward case that even the Planetoid Prison testers named correctly. He feared death, and clung to children as sexual partners in order to live within the illusion of perpetual youth. That was common in pedophiles. That, and fear of powerlessness were the two fears she most frequently had to make them meet in this prison system where criminals were rehabbed by facing their fears.

  And she knew how to bring them there.

  She was the one Teacher on Prison Planetoid 3 who had a consistent success rate with pedophiles. Either repugnance or lack of skill kept most Teachers from getting the job done, while Jaguar used her highly developed talents in the empathic arts to bring these men to the deepest part of their shadowed selves. Alex, her supervisor and a good enough empath that he ought to know better, was always nagging her about the danger of getting shadow sickness from such contact, but Jaguar found she’d get nowhere without it. Other techniques were totally ineffective. Even the newer meds shifted only their chemistry, but not their souls.

  Jaguar wanted to shift their souls. She intoned the ritual words that would begin to do so with this prisoner.

  “See who you are,” she said, “Be what you see.”

  She reached for him, her sea-green eyes holding him still. The air in the room grew thick with the low hum of human energy in motion.

  Then, a voice called her name.

  From somewhere clear as a night emptied of stars, a child’s voice called her.

  Jaguar.

  She went still, her focus dissipated.

  Jaguar. We need you.

  “Who is it?” she whispered.

  Hurry Jaguar. We’re waiting for you.

  “Where?” she sent back.

  No answer. Laughter ran through her. Near the bookshelves that lined her living room wall she saw motion, small and quick, like a darting hummingbird. A book shook itself loose and fell to the floor. Her eyes were sharp enough to read the title on the spine.

  The Etiquette of Vampires, by Lale Davidson.

  Her prisoner blinked, saw his opportunity and lunged for her. And for the next few minutes she was too busy with her job to think of anything else.

  Chapter 1

  “Taking up a new hobby?” Alex asked, picking up a book from the coffee table in Jaguar’s living room.

  On top of the book, The Etiquette of Vampires, was a disc titled Vampires of the World.

  Jaguar, who was bringing a tray with honey and cups of tea from the kitchen to the living room, stopped and scanned all six feet and one inch of him, from his thick dark hair to his good black shoes. Then she brought her glance up to stay with his angular face and coal dark eyes. Alex, accustomed to her occasional need to visually frisk him for weapons, waited it out.

  “Know anything about vampires?” she asked.

  “That depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  “On what kind you mean. The Draculas, the Japanese river creatures, the lamia. Or maybe you mean the twenty-first century romantic version?”

  “Not those,” she said, and she moved toward the coffee table with her burden. “There’s no glitter in the beast, if you ask me.”

  “Okay, then. Maybe the Windigo—or the Greenkeepers, as they’re called.”

  Jaguar set the tray down on the coffee table and curled herself into a chair, inviting Alex to take the couch. “Apparently you do know something about them,” she said as he sat.

  He tossed the book on the table between them. “I like to read, too. Did you get through Davidson yet?”

  “Some of it. I had a prisoner to deal with.”

  “So why are you interested in vampires?” he asked.

  She poured honey into her spoon and stirred her tea with it. “Idle curiosity,” she said, and he laughed.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she demanded, viewing him over her spoon as she licked the remaining honey off it.

  “Nothing, except I don’t believe you. You never do anything idly. You’re very goal-oriented. Which kind of vampires are you interested in?”

  “And you’re as persistent as a truffle hunting pig. What difference does it make which vampire?”

  “It’ll tell me what I have to worry about. For instance, if you’re researching Windigo, a Native species, it’s probably for ritual purposes and my level of concern remains low.”

  “Windigo aren’t Mertec. My people had a different name for it.”

  “I’m aware of that. But Davidson doesn’t have a section on the earth-eater. In fact, I might be the only white man in the world who knows about it.”

  She reached across the table and traced a star on his forehead. “Consider it a gold one,” she said. “And if I’m interested in Lamias?”

  “You’re not, are you?” he asked.

  She retreated into herself, stirring her tea. He reached across the table and touched her wrist as he let his thoughts slip into hers.

  What is it? he asked, subvocally.

  He felt her sharp retraction, and quickly, courteously, he bowed out. But not before he retrieved a piece of information he’d been seeking.

  He leaned back in his chair, picked up his tea. “Why are you interested in Greenkeepers?”

  “The Adept at work,” she muttered.

  She considered his precognitive capacities the most manipulative of the empathic arts and continued to distrust them, with feeling.

  “I don’t think I’m the only one working, chant-shaper,” he answered.

  She kept her gaze away from his. He tapped his spoon against the table. She raised her head and lifted a corner of her mouth in a smile. Deliberately neutral, except for her eyes, which studied him hard.

  He knew that look. She was waiting to see his next move before she made any of her own. Her ego allowed her to make very few false moves. And right now, it was entirely possible that she was afraid of him, for the same reasons he was afraid of her.

  No. Not afraid of her. Afraid of what he felt about her.

  They’d worked together for over six years, been very good friends for at least five, and slept together once. Just once. Enough to tell them both that kind of interaction wasn’t something to take or leave lightly.

  A few months had passed since then, and the only agreement they’d reached was to go neither forward nor backwards. She’d been aloof, and he’d been polite and distant. They were engaged in a complex dance on a trembling plane, waiting to see if the earth would stop its tectonic motion any time soon, or if they could find new footing on it.

  For his part, he’d also been watching for her fur to settle after the intensity of their last encounter, which had served to save both their lives. He approached her as he would any wild thing, with slow and deliberate care. She needed time to know she could negotiate the turf of what wo
uld be a totally new geography of the emotions for them both. And right now, she needed to know what he knew about Greenkeepers.

  She stretched her legs out, the material of her long, loose dress rippling like water over them. Her gaze was open and clear as ocean, and just as impossible to fathom. Her silence was extravagant and complete. She was waiting for him to come up with something. He obliged.

  “The Greenkeeper,” he said, “is a deceptively gentle name for modern North American vampires. They were first written about after the Serials, when quite a few of the earliest murderers brought in claimed they used ritual rape and murder to regenerate themselves physically. Nothing proven, of course, but theoretically Greenkeepers can use energy transfer, blood, or sexual fluids to trigger cellular regeneration. They prefer children, because they’ve got more of the right stuff than adults. The name,” he concluded, “is from the response of regenerative biochemicals to lab experiments.”

  He took her hand and lifted his teacup over it, pouring a stream of green tea to pool in her palm. “When isolated, they turn green.”

  She stared at her palm, then tipped it to let the tea flow into the saucer under his cup. She closed her eyes and pressed the index finger of her right hand against her lips, tapped them as if sounding morse code. Alex waited. When she reopened her eyes, they were still neutral.

  “Pedophiles were some of the earliest ritual killers during the Serials. So how do you tell the difference between a pedophile and a Greenkeeper?” she asked.

  “Is that a riddle?”

  “No. I’m asking. How?”

  That was an unexpected question. He searched his rather extensive memory to see what emerged. Jonathan Post, in his book Unparticular Magic, said early 21st literature that romanticized vampires reflected the larger cultural attraction to pedophilia. Other historians noted that rates for child abuse were higher previous to the Killing Times than at any other time in history. They calculated how many of those abused went on to become abuser, who were released from overcrowded prisons just before the violence erupted.

  But pedophiles were a dime a dozen, while even Davidson admitted that Greenkeepers were rare, if they existed at all. They either had to be born with the inherent capacity to access regenerative material, or transformed into that skill by another Greenkeeper. And unlike any other psi capacity, they never turned out well.