The Laughing Corpse - Laurell K. Hamilton [78]
“You know I’m not his human servant.”
“But he wants you to be.”
“Just because Jean-Claude wants something doesn’t mean he gets it,” I said.
“You don’t know what he’s like.”
“I think I do . . .”
He touched my arm. I didn’t jerk back this time. I was too intent on what he was saying. “He’s been different since the old master died. He’s a lot more powerful than even you know.”
This much I had suspected. “So why shouldn’t I tell him you’re afraid of zombies?”
“He’ll use it to punish me.”
I stared at him, our eyes inches apart. “You mean he’s torturing people to control them.”
He nodded.
“Shit.”
“You won’t tell?”
“I won’t tell. Promise,” I said.
He looked so relieved, I patted his hand. The hand felt like a hand. His body didn’t feel wood hard anymore. Why? I didn’t know, and if I asked Willie, he probably wouldn’t know either. One of the mysteries of . . . death.
“Thanks.”
“I thought you said that Jean-Claude was the kindest master you’ve ever had.”
“He is,” Willie said.
Now that was a frightening truth. If being tormented by your darkest fear was the kindest, how much worse had Nikolaos been. Hell, I knew the answer to that one. She’d been psychotic. Jean-Claude wasn’t cruel just for the sake of watching people squirm. There was reason to his cruelty. It was a step up.
“I gotta go. Thanks for helping with the zombie.” He stood.
“You were brave, you know,” I said.
He flashed a grin my way, fangs glinting in the dim light. The smile vanished from his face like someone had turned a switch. “I can’t afford to be anything else.”
Vampires are a lot like wolf packs. The weak are either dominated or destroyed. Banishment is not an option. Willie was moving up in the ranks. A sign of weakness could stop that rise or worse. I’d often wondered what vampires feared. One of them feared zombies. It would have been funny if I hadn’t seen the fear in his eyes.
The comic on stage was a vampire. He was the new dead. Skin chalk-white, eyes like burned holes in paper. His gums were bloodless and receding from canines that would have been the envy of any German shepherd. I had never seen a vampire look so monstrous. They all usually made an effort to appear human. This one wasn’t.
I had missed the audience’s reaction to his first appearance, but now they were laughing. If I had thought the zombie jokes were bad, these were worse. A woman at the next table laughed so hard, tears spilled down her cheeks.
“I went to New York, tough city. A gang jumped me, but I put the bite on them.” People were holding their ribs as if in pain.
I didn’t get it. It was genuinely not funny. I gazed around the crowd and found every eye fixed on the stage. They peered up at him with the helpless devotion of the bespelled.
He was using mind tricks. I’d seen vampires seduce, threaten, terrify, all by concentrating. But I had never seen them cause laughter. He was forcing them to laugh.
It wasn’t the worst abuse of vampiric powers I’d ever seen. He wasn’t trying to hurt them. And this mass hypnosis was harmless, temporary. But it was wrong. Mass mind control was one of the top scary things that most people don’t know vampires can do.
I knew, and I didn’t like it. He was the fresh dead and even before Jean-Claude’s marks, the comic couldn’t have touched me. Being an animator gave you partial immunity to vampires. It was one of the reasons that animators are so often vampire slayers. We’ve got a leg up, so to speak.
I had called Charles earlier, but I still didn’t see him. He is not easy to miss in a crowd, sort of like Godzilla going through Tokyo. Where was he? And when would Jean-Claude be ready to see me? It was now after eleven. Trust him to browbeat me into a meeting and then make me wait. He was such an arrogant son of a bitch.
Charles came through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen area. He strode through the tables, heading for the door. He was shaking his head and murmuring to a small Asian man who was having to quick-run to keep up.
I waved, and Charles changed direction towards me. I could hear