Storm Front

"Mister Dresden," she greeted me. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

I rose when she entered the room. "Madame Bianca," I replied, nodding to her. "We meet at last. Hearsay neglected to mention how lovely you are."

She laughed, lips shaping the sounds, head falling back just enough to show a flash of pale throat. "A gentleman, they said. I see that they were correct. It is a charmingly passe thing to be a gentleman in this country."

"You and I are of another world," I said.

She approached me and extended her hand, a motion oozing feminine grace. I bowed over her hand briefly, taking it and brushing my lips against the back of her glove. "Do you really think I’m beautiful, Mister Dresden?" she asked me.

"As lovely as a star, Madame."

"Polite and a pretty one, too," she murmured. Her eyes flickered over me, from head to toe, but even she avoided meeting gazes with me, whether from a desire to avoid inadvertently directing her power at me, or being on the receiving end of mine, I couldn’t tell. She continued into the room, and stopped beside one of the comfortable chairs. As a matter of course, I stepped around the table, and drew out the chair for her, seating her. She crossed her legs, in that dress, in those shoes, and made it look good. I blinked for just a moment, then returned to my own seat.

"So, Mister Dresden. What brings you to my humble house? Care for an evening of entertainment? I quite assure you that you will never have another experience like it." She placed her hands in her lap, smiling at me.

I smiled at her, and put one hand into my pocket, onto the white handkerchief. "No, thank you. I came to talk."

Her lips parted in a silent, ah. "I see. About what, if I might ask?"

"About Jennifer Stanton. And her murder."

I had all of a second’s warning. Bianca’s eyes narrowed, then widened, like those of a cat about to spring. Then she was coming at me over the table, faster than a breath, her arms extended toward my throat.

I toppled over backward in my chair. Even though I’d started to move first, it almost wasn’t enough to get away from her reaching nails in time. One grazed my throat with a hot sensation of pain, and she kept coming, following me down to the floor, those rich lips drawn back from sharp fangs.

I jerked my hand out of my pocket, and flapped open my white hanky at her, releasing the image of sunlight I’d been storing for use in potions. It lit up the room for a moment, brilliant.

The light smashed into Bianca, hurled her back across the old table into one of the shelves, and tore pieces of flesh away from her like bits of rotten meat being peeled off a carcass by a sandblaster. She screamed, and the flesh around her mouth sloughed and peeled away like a snake’s scales.

I had never seen a real vampire before. I would have time to be terrified later. I took in the details as I tugged my talisman off over my neck. It had a batlike face, horrid and ugly, the head too big for its body. Gaping, hungry jaws. Its shoulders were hunched and powerful. Membranous wings stretched between the joints of its almost skeletal arms. Flabby black br**sts hung before it, spilling out of the black dress that no longer looked feminine. Its eyes were wide, black, and staring, and a kind of leathery, slimy hide covered its flesh, like an inner tube lathered with Vaseline, though there were tiny holes corroded in it by the sunlight I had brought with me.

It recovered quickly, crouching and spreading long arms that ended in claw-tipped fingers to either side with a hiss of rage.

I drew my pentacle into my fist, raised it like every vampire slayer you ever saw does it, and said, "Jesus Christ, lady. I just came here to talk."

The vampire hissed and started toward me with a gangling, weirdly graceful step. Its clawed feet were still wearing the three-hundred-dollar black pumps.

"Back," I said, taking a step towards it, myself. The pentacle began to burn with the cold, clear light of applied will and belief – my faith, if you will, that it could turn such a monster aside.

It hissed, and turned its face aside, lifting its membranous arms to shield its eyes from the light. It took one step back, and then another, until its hunched back was pressed against a wall of books.

Now what did I do? I wasn’t going to go try to put a stake through her heart. But if I lowered my will, she might come at me again – and I didn’t think I had anything, even the quickest evocations, that I could get out of my mouth before she tore it off of my head. And even if I got past her, she probably had mortal lackies, like the security guard at the gate, who would be happy to kill me if they saw me trashing their mistress.

"You killed her," the vampire snarled, and its voice was exactly the same, sultry and feminine, even though twisted by rage and coming from that horrid mouth. It was unsettling. "You killed Jennifer. She was mine, mageling."

"Look," I told her. "I didn’t come here for any of this. And the police know I’m here. Save yourself a lot of trouble. Sit down, talk with me, and then we’ll both go away happy. Christ, Bianca, do you think that if I’d killed Jennifer and Tommy Tomm that I’d just be waltzing in here like this?"

"You expect me to believe that you didn’t? You will never leave this house alive."

I was feeling angry myself, and frightened. Christ, even the vampire thought I was the bad guy. "What’ll it take to convince you that I didn’t do it?"

Black, bottomless eyes stared at me through the burning fire of my faith. I could feel some sort of power there, trying to get at me, and held off by the force of my will, just as the creature itself was. The vampire snarled, "Lower the amulet, wizard."

"If I do, are you going to come at my throat again?"

"If you do not, I most certainly will."

Shaky logic, that. I tried to work through the situation from her point of view. She had been scared when I showed up. She’d had me searched and divested of weapons as best she could. If she thought that I was Jennifer Stanton’s murderer, would the mere mention of that name have brought that sudden violence out of her? I began to get that sinking feeling you get when you realize that not everything is as it appears.

"If I put this down," I told her, "I want your word that you’ll sit down and talk to me. I swear to you, by fire and wind, that I had nothing to do with her death."

The vampire hissed at me, shielding its eyes from the light with one taloned hand. "Why should I believe you?"

"Why should I believe you!" I countered.

Yellowed fangs showed in its mouth. "If you do not trust my word, wizard, then how can I trust yours?"