Victims SS Read online

  The door closed behind me. I sat on the edge of the couch, feeling sixteen again, and at the interview for my page position. I tugged on the knees of my trousers. They were tight across the groin.

  A door opened, and then Veronique was in the room. She wore her hair piled on top of her head, revealing a slender well formed neck. This time she wore a suit. The jacket was open, and the shell was cut low across her breasts, revealing cleavage and a bit of nipple. She sat on the edge of her desk and crossed her legs. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Catton.”

  I swallowed. I was a happily married man. Alison and I had a good sex life. I didn’t need anything else. “I’m here on business.”

  She smiled. “Most people are.”

  “No,” I said. “For Senator Lurry.”

  “Ah.” She got off the desk and retreated behind it, tugging her coat across her chest. “You want to know details. How can a human male rape a woman of superior strength? It’s really quite easy, Mr. Catton. It simply takes planning. He must learn where I sleep, for that’s when I am most vulnerable, and learn how to tie me up, how to immobilize my mouth. Determination, Mr. Catton —”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I said. I couldn’t stand the calm tone she was using with me. “I’ve been thinking about this. We’re investigating your claim now, but it doesn’t completely make sense to me. Assume that I believe you, what’s in this for you? You have other, more subtle ways to bring down Nichols. Why chose a haphazard method that may not work?”

  She smiled and leaned back, letting the coat pull open again. The shell was thin and it stretched across her chest, outline her breasts in detail. Her nipples were hard points against the material.

  I forced myself to look at her eyes.

  “You’re very smart, Mr. Catton,” she said.

  I licked my lips. She made me nervous, here, in her lair. “I try to be.”

  “Then perhaps you will understand that I am tired of being hidden. My people have been out of the closet, to use your quaint phrase, for five years now, and we are still fighting myths and prejudices. We live long lives, and have experiences that encompass entire generations. We understand policy and its ramifications better than you do. But our limitations, Mr. Catton, became obvious once the camera was invented. We cannot run for office. We could not even try until a few years ago.”

  I tugged again at my pants legs. It was good they couldn’t run, good that television cameras couldn’t pick them up. With their charisma, they would win, every time. “People are too afraid of you to elect you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. But things change over time. We have seen that with African Americans and with women. We have decided that it is better to fight in an open forum than behind the scenes.”

  “To put you up against Nichols media machine is to sacrifice you to the prejudices of the American people. You’ll lose.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I’ll damage Nichols, and I’ll start the awareness that vampires are not the all evil, all powerful beings the movies have made them out to be.”

  I ran a hand along the crushed velvet upholstery. “I don’t understand how choosing to become a victim will help you politically.”

  She shrugged, and smiled, just a little. “Then, Mr. Catton, you’re not as smart as I thought.”

  v

  I immediately hurried home. Fortunately Alison was there. Much to her surprise, I dragged her to bed, and we made love like newlyweds in their sexual prime. We had just finished when the doorbell rang.

  She brushed the hair from her forehead. “You go on,” she said, pushing me a little. “I need to shower. I’m already late for a Women in Business meeting.”

  I slid on a pair of jeans, walked barefoot to the door, and looked through the peephole. Stuckey was there, her face pale beneath the make-up. She clutched a stack of folders to her chest. Her briefcase rested on the floor beside her.

  I pulled the door open.

  “We need to talk,” she said, and came in without an invitation. Her shoes left little prints on the hardwood floor. She set everything on the diningroom table, pushing the basket of fruit aside to make room.

  I sat down beside her, opened the files, and barely looked up when Alison kissed me good-bye. The files were dusty, the old police reports more detailed than I had expected, as if someone had been planning a case. A client had found Veronique, naked, blood-covered, and half dead in her waiting room. She had been tied with silver wire, a garlic bulb shoved in her mouth, and slashed from groin to sternum with a knife. The reports were filed by four separate officers, and a pathologist. Veronique had been conscious enough to demand her private doctor, and instead of being treated by the hospital staff, she had been treated by a man now known as the vampire’s equivalent of doctor to the stars.

  The files included photos of the crime scene, and Veronique’s account, both on tape, and in writing, of the rape itself. The investigation ended as soon as the nature of Veronique’s profession became known.

  Stuckey watched me as I read Veronique’s account. Nichols had not been alone. Four other politicians of his generation had been there to take care of Veronique properly. Three of the four were dead — one in a single engine plane crash over the Appalachians, one in an unsolved murder in Mexico, and one of an undiagnosed variety of pernicious anemia which the doctor associated with leukemia but which was now known to be caused by bad reaction to secretions in vampire saliva.

  The fourth was alive: Senator Jason Lurry, then a first term Congressman from the great state of Texas.

  I brought my head up. Stuckey was watching me, elbow on the table, chin resting on her palm. “She set us up,” I said.

  Stuckey rolled her eyes. “Veronique is not the problem,” she said. “It’s Lurry. He lied to us and to his constituents from the beginning. Did you read why he participated?”

  I shook my head. I had stopped when I saw his name.

  “Because she was withholding favors from them. Political favors. She was refusing to use her sexual influence to aid their careers.”

  I let my breath out slowly. “Raping her was certainly not the way to get her to help.”

  “No,” Stuckey said, “but it sent a message throughout the community. A lot of people knew what she was. They must have figured these men had a lot of muscle behind them to get her as badly as they did.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. A headache was building behind my eyes. It all made sense now. Lurry and Nichols had ceased being friends in ‘67. Something must have come between them then, something to do with Veronique. They managed to succeed without her, but not to the heights they had wanted. And whenever they had come close to achieving those heights, something had successfully damaged their careers — like Lurry’s daughter’s suicide.

  “What I don’t understand is why she’s doing this now,” I said. “I talked to her. I said going public would make her a victim, and why would anyone want to be a victim? She laughed at me and called me naive.”

  Stuckey blinked at me, and then grinned. “You’re not naive,” she said. “You’re just privileged. Reese Catton, son of politicians, product of private schools and Ivy League law schools. Even your name has the sound of wealth.”

  I squirmed, suddenly cold without my shirt. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means you’re one of the lucky few who’ve never been victimized.” She leaned forward, a flush rising beneath her dusky skin. “Reese, honey, victims are victims when they remain quiet. They gain power when they speak out.”

  The headache had moved to my temples. “She had power. It looks like she controlled their careers from the inside.”

  “But that’s a revenge cycle,” Stuckey said, “and no more empowering than punching a man who mugged you. You need to read more about ways to help the powerless. Look what empathy did for Bobby Kennedy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, standing. “It got him assassinated.”

  vi

  This time we met in n
eutral territory, at the Lincoln Memorial. I waited on the steps after dark, in the shadow of Honest Abe himself.

  Honest Abe, who had suspended civil rights, and freed the slaves as a matter of political expediency. Honest Abe, who really wanted to send all the blacks back to Africa.

  I heard her before I saw her. Heels clicking against the sidewalk, a purse clutched to her arm. She wasn’t wearing hooker clothes or a business suit. This time, she wore jeans and a mohair sweater. The outfit suited her more than the others had.

  “You set me up,” I said, before I could see her face in the streetlight.

  “No.” She climbed the stairs and sat beside me on the top. She smelled faintly of lilacs. “I have just learned that it is easier to convince people when they discover the information for themselves. You wouldn’t have believed me if I attacked your precious senator. You believe me now.”

  I did that. If nothing else, I believed Veronique’s version of those events back in 1966. “What do you want from me?”

  “We need a spokesman. You are our best choice. You are young, moving into that youthful handsomeness that this country associates with its romantic leaders. But the problem is you have no dreams, no ideals. We will give those to you.” She ran a hand through her hair. There was nothing seductive about her this night. “You see, what your histories have forgotten is that the symbiosis went beyond the physical. Your people provided the energy, the power, and the drive. Ours the sense of community and continuity. Over the centuries, we failed to keep our end. We stagnated, and you rebelled — a rebellion that culminated with the invention of the camera and became codified with the publication of Stoker’s horrible political tract. But we have learned our lesson. We would like to forge a new voice in the political history of the western world. We would like a new alliance, and we need your help.”

  I leaned back, resting my elbows on the cool concrete stairs. I should have been used to power games; I had initiated enough myself. But I had been off balance in this one from the beginning. “Why me? Why not someone like Stuckey?”

  “Because,” she said, “you have no personal axes to grind, no commitment to anything except yourself, your lovely wife, and your home. We don’t want someone with other ties that might interfere with our cause.”

  Words were carved into the walls above me. Great words, spoken by a man considered by many to be one of our best leaders. Who knew why he ran for office. Power-madness? A belief he could make a difference? Ego? All three or none of the above?

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know anything about you people. For all I know, you could be trying to take over the country.”

  She smiled, her teeth flashing in the streetlights. “Isn’t that what every special interest group hopes to do?”

  “Not every special interest group has the power of persuasion that you people have.”

  She touched my hand. Her fingers were cold. “I should make myself clear. I’m not asking you to run for President. I want you to resign as Lurry’s aide, then help me make a public case against them.”

  Her fingers were long and slender, the nails tapered. “Forgive me,” I said, keeping my voice soft. “But I was right that first night. Middle America won’t care that you were raped.”

  “Make them care. That would be your job.”

  I moved my arm out of her grasp. “There are better people for that. Image brokers, people who make their living changing public opinion.”

  “But none are as unimpeachable as you.” She leaned back beside me. “Think of it. You worked for Senator Lurry. You discovered the information yourself. It so appalled you that you are jeopardizing your own political career to speak out against him.”

  I tilted my head back so that I couldn’t see her. Abe’s carved legs, spread slightly apart, towered above me. She would do this, with or without me. And she would fail, but the die would be cast. Conversations would start; people would talk; ideas would get aired like they had at the beginning of each intellectual and perceptual revolution.

  The balance of power was shifting beneath me. I could cling to the old or leap to the new. Or I could attempt to straddle the middle, and watch the world as I knew it crumble beneath my feet.

  I had planned to resign anyway.

  I needed a new job.

  “Let me bring Stuckey along and I’ll do it,” I said.

  “You may have anyone you want on your team.” Veronique stood and wiped off the back of her jeans. “Come to me after you’ve publicly announced your resignation. We’ll finalize our agreement then.”

  She walked down the steps, heels clicking until the darkness swallowed her. I didn’t know how I ever thought she wanted to be a victim. She had more power than all the rest of us combined — the power of her convictions. I envied that. It was something I had never seen in Washington.

  Maybe the world was shifting more than I thought.

  “Victims” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch first published in Sisters of the Night, edited by Barbara Hambly and Martin H. Greenberg, Warner Aspect, 1995.