In one of the flats, the Wizards, Witches and Warlocks were all grouped together. Some of them had followed the old traditions, venturing off into the woods alone to end their lives in nature, but many had moved past those romantic ideas of ritual. The concrete blocks seemed as fine a place as any to stop breathing.
The pensions were paid out of the coffers of the Opus. Some questioned the moral implications of the High Elves’ decision to spend the public savings on themselves, but what good was a magical alliance when there wasn’t any magic? The Elves funneled the money into the old folks’ homes so the newly aged races could live out their final days in comfortable retirement.
Not everyone chose the quiet life of living in the compounds, but you couldn’t blame the ones that did. Even those of us with hard meat on our bones had a tough time keeping on.
Chancellor Fen Tackman had never been an enemy and he’d never really been a friend. He’d led the soldiers of the Opus on many missions and Hendricks and I worked beside him a handful of times. Unlike most of his allies, he’d neither appreciated nor resented my place in his force.
I don’t think he even cared when I defected. It was certainly only Hendricks that would have been hurt. To everybody else, it was exactly what they expected and they were happy to see the end of me. Bringing a Human into the Opus turned out to be a terrible idea, just like everyone anticipated.
Tackman’s room was no grander than any other in the refurbished block of flats; one badly wallpapered dorm with a cloth curtain hiding the en suite that was nothing but a sink and an eternally running toilet. Single bed. Narrow bookshelf. A wobbly-looking desk over a kitchen chair. No photos on the walls, just a window sheered with thin cotton to take the edge off the already dim light.
He held himself up on a dark, wooden walking stick with an ivory handle that had been carved into the head of a Dragon. His cloak had been pressed and laundered with a care that was unique to military men. The smooth, colorful outfit contrasted the gray folds of his skin.
Tackman had always been muscular for an Elf. He still was. But those broad shoulders had become a hindrance and his wide torso weighed him down over the shining cane. His hair was all white and little brown scabs had formed on the end of his nose and bottom lip.
Frailty had crept inside his body but his green eyes were clear. When they landed on me, I felt like a nervous boy again, ready to fall into line if the old man barked my name. There were never enough good leaders in the world and too many bad ones. Tackman was the best I’d ever known. When he saw me, he didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl. He just straightened his shoulders as best he could and asked me why I’d come.
I skipped through the pleasantries and got to the juice.
“A Vampire. First a missing person, now a potential suspect in another case. A girl has disappeared. She was a student of the Vamp and the two of them were close. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but the Professor had opportunity. I need to know if he had motive and means.”
He nodded.
“How old is he?”
“Roughly three centuries.”
“And how has the poor fellow been faring? Physically?”
“Not well, by most reports. Standing on the welcome mat of death’s open door.”
“Motive and means, you say? Explain.”
I’d missed working with Fen. No need to sweeten the deal, just start lobbing the medicine ball back and forth.
“I want to know if he still has the hunger and, if he does, whether he’d be strong enough to do anything about it.”
Fen’s eyelashes were gone but the ends of his eyebrows were long enough to curl around and tickle themselves. When he sighed, they tilted outwards like a bridge opening for a passing ship.
“Follow me.”
Between the Elven flats and the office block, a patch of dead grass was scattered with picnic tables and metal benches. High buildings on all sides stopped the wind from disrupting the card games laid out on every table. Some patrons just sat and stared, either at the sky or at maybe nothing at all.
Most of the offices were even smaller than the flats; subdivided into bedrooms with shared bathrooms down the hall. The central rows had no windows, just lamplit boxes where empty-headed husks drooled into their laps. Throughout the halls, radios played songs that crackled in from another time. In a corner office with a window towards the cloud-covered outline of the rising sun, a rusted wheelchair held up a hunchbacked Vampire in a hospital gown.
Through translucent skin, I saw blue veins wrapped around a dried-up riverbank of bones. Tiny pupils floated in bulging red eyes bleached by cataracts. His mouth hung open wide enough for me to see the tips of his untarnished fangs. Hands, like lumps of crushed velvet, were folded on the blanket that covered his knees.
“How old is he?”
“Ten years older than yours,” said Tackman with a characteristic lack of sentiment.
I knelt in front of the living skeleton and waited for his eyes to find me in their focus. They never did. I was just more empty space between him and some faded memory.
“When did he start using the wheelchair?”
“A week after the Coda. Collapsed on the street without the strength to get back up.”
“Stopped talking?”
“About a year ago.”
“What did he do before that?”
“He was an envoy for the League. Mind as sharp as Dwarven steel.”
“What does he eat?”
“Now? Air and water.”
Breath rolled through his throat like someone dragging ice out of a freezer. The tips of those sharpened teeth glistened with dried spit. I took my knife from my belt.
Tackman didn’t stop me but I could tell that he got a little tense. I stood up and held the edge of the weapon in my closed palm.
The blade curved into my skin and I slid it through my fist with the deliberate slowness of a glacier. In the grand scheme of suffering it didn’t hurt at all. Besides, my attention wasn’t on my hand; it was on the half-dead face tilted at a rotten angle in front of me. I waited for the wide, pointed nostrils to flare with the scent. I waited for the rolling eyes to snap to attention. I waited for the dry, gently parted lips to rear back and flash those retired fangs.
But nothing moved.
I peeled open my palm and the blood stuck in strings between the blade and my skin.
And nothing moved.
My unclenched fist slid forward till it was atoms from his face.
Give me something. Show me you want it. Show me you still want it.
Behind his bottom row of perfectly white teeth, a gray tongue sat dormant like a stingray sleeping in the mud.
And nothing moved.
A liquid ruby fell from my fingers into the old man’s lap and landed in the puddle of drool that had been collecting there all morning.
Tackman exhaled.
“I believe this experiment is over.”
We walked out of the room and Tackman didn’t stop till we’d left the building, crossed the square and turned down James Street, which was home to a specific group of pensioners: the Humans. It was a smaller block of buildings that was more run-down and crowded than the rest of the village. On this street, the pubs and bars were still dancing their old routine and the smell of hoppy brew wafted in the air.
We entered the second building and approached the bar.