Page 5 of Bishop's Flight
Carwyn glanced at her with a smile. “Join the club, darling girl.”
She might be a crusty old vampire, but his attachment to the 1974 customized van was completely illogical. He barely fit in it. The windows had to be blacked out during the day. Sleeping in the thing was cramped for Brigid, which meant it had to be suffocating for her gargantuan mate.
“I’ve heard tell they’re making an electric Hummer thing now,” she said. “It’s quite large. And friendly toward the planet.”
Lee piped up. “Electric cars are the way to go for humans, but you’d short that whole thing out in five seconds and it’d be a brick, Brigid.”
She turned and glared at him. “Sonowyou have an opinion?”
He wasn’t wrong, of course. As a vampire who drew energy from the element of fire, Brigid was particularly… sparky. All vampires lived with natural electricity, of course; a current of energy ran beneath their skin that many calledamnis. It enlivened them. It allowed them to manipulate their body heat and even manipulate humans.
It also shorted out almost all modern electronic equipment.
“You guys should get an old camper,” Lee said. “Like a seventies-era Winnebago or something. You could bling that out and have more room.”
“See!” Brigid pointed at him. “Lee thinks the van is too small.”
“Betrayer!” Carwyn yelled. “I thought you loved this van, Lee.”
“I do.” The man closed his computer. “I can’t play when you guys are yelling.”
The man had been manipulated, abused, and stalked by one of their own kind, and Brigid sometimes forgot to tread carefully. “Apologies, Lee. We’re not truly fightin’ or being aggressive, and I’m sorry if we’ve made ya uncomfortable.”
Lee raised an eyebrow. “I just meant that you’re loud and your accents get stronger when you’re pissed off.”
She blinked. “Oh. Right.”
“But I do love this car, which is why you need a bigger camper. So then you can sell it to me.” He gave her a toothy grin. “See? I’m conniving, not traumatized.”
Carwyn peered in the rearview mirror, and the corner of his mouth turned up. “Indeed you are.”
“Lee, could you do an internet search for classic Winnebagos?” She turned to Carwyn. “Did I say that right? Winnebago?”
“You did, but I make no promises.” He patted the wheel of the van. “Lucille and I have bonded.” In fact, Lucille had just received a bright new paint job that was the color of the turquoise-blue stone common in the American Southwest.
It was, she had to admit, ridiculously pretty, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. “I’m sure you’d bond with a fancy, restored Winnebunko too.”
“Winnebago,” Lee said.
“Aye, that’s what I meant.”
The driveto Las Vegas from their home base in the forests of Humboldt County was long and had taken them across the state, through the city of Reno, and down along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Along the way, the land had grown flatter and drier, and the air had gone from the balmy cool mists of the redwood forest to the scrub brush and piñon trees of the desert.
While all climates suited her earth vampire husband, Brigid had a particular fondness for humidity because it allowed her to easily control the static electricity that was drawn to her. The desert was not her favorite place.
“Tell me more about these women.” She opened her notebook, trying to distract herself.
“Rose Di Marco is the only one I’ve met, and that was about a hundred years ago when she was in a cabaret show in Chicago.”
Lee piped up. “Uh-oh. The priest revealing his sordid past?”
Carwyn grinned, and Brigid didn’t try to hide her laugh.
“Remember,” Carwyn said. “I never claimed to be agoodpriest. And the Americans had restricted whiskey, for the love of Christ. More than one priest found himself at a cabaret just to get a decent drink after a Friday confession.”
“Was Giovanni with you?”
“He had been, but he’d moved on and I was visiting some other old friends. There was a promoter—earth vampire like me—who’d left France before the wars came. Erik, his name was. Erik had organized the cabaret, catered to our kind with all sorts of immortal performers, a few humans in the group, but Rose…” He sighed. “Rose was the star. Her voice was like an angel’s. I don’t know who trained her as a human, but she was a stunning vampire.”
