“Diablo! El Diablo!”The machete came down with all the force the man holding it could bring to bear, thick blade dented against ‘simple’ flesh and bone as Zander caught it on his forearm. “Honestly…”The warehouse stank of gunpowder, diesel and the cheap cologne these cartel boys drowned themselves in like it could cover the scent of blood on their hands. Unfortunately, there was very little that could hide the stink of people who fed mothers and their kids into oil drums and slept like babies right after. Muzzle flashes strobed as guns barked along with them from the far end of the floor, catwalk shooters dumping rounds into the dark where they still thought he was.Bullets chewed the concrete floor, ammunition chewing a pallet of shrink-wrapped American bills which — honestly, boys, have some decency. The eternal teenager was still busy staring over his glasses at the guy still gripping tight to the weapon and barely holding tight to his bladder, the smell of fear thick in his blood as his heart pounded. “You get points for that one.” And the guy deserved them, too.It was a ballsy move, especially after seeing what happened to his friends that had already tried shooting him everywhere else. “That one I respect. Some heart. Some hustle.”The vampire leaned in close, one hand on the back of the man’s head and lips in the machete man’s ear before the guy even saw him move. “You get to live for that.”Fingers grasped his collar and Zander spun with an open-mouthed laugh. A split second later, a grown man went airborne and flew bodily through a stack of steel drums with the sound of a car crash going through labor. Live long, cartel man.After the hospital stay, of course.Blood was thick as mescal in the air already, three different flavors of guilty in his nose as his gums throbbed sweet with it, fangs so far down they were practically waving. Zander Cray bent back, head facing the ceiling and arms out at his sides as he laughed louder and harder; the sound loud enough to echo over the gunshots. All at once, voices and gun barrels all turned his way again, the vampire in all blue lit from all sides by flashlights.A split second later, he was lit up by bullets.
Rounds punched into every inch of him; chest, shoulder, heart, lungs, one even clipping clean through his cheek and out the other side. And, yeah, it stung.He couldn’t even pretend it didn’t, the sensation a hot needle of torn skin, one that was going to itch itself closed again soon. Annoying. As bad as that was, nothing was worse than a new suit ruined an hour into the night. Eh, whatever.
Still cackling as his body shook with each impact and rivers of blood ran free down his blue duster, Zander stepped over a body that used to have a face and let the muzzle bursts paint the dark for him. Little bursts of gunfire turned the room into a flipbook.
Flash, man, flash, man, flash, meat.
Gloved fingers caught the closest one by the face in a grip tight enough to peel skin, the guy rising off his feet like a gym bag. Zander leaned in past the wild pistol swinging up at him, still laughing, and put his mouth to the fat throbbing vein under the jaw.Hot.God, that was the difference he couldn’t live with.
Bag blood was a corpse in a juice pouch. Worse than comparing a Capri-Sun to fresh-squeezed.This was still moving, still running, still had the man's whole terrible little week soaked in it, the fear-chemicals lighting it up like real sugarcane in a soda. It was nothing compared to the cocaine of vampire venom, but that was rare and hard to find as it was.
This is it, though. This is the whole thing. The cartel spent all this money looking scary, all the gold teeth and the face tats and the AKs, and not one of them ever stopped to think there might be something further up the food chain. Somebody's always meaner. Somebody's always hungrier. He pulled his bloody mouth and sighed as the beast inside laughed as loud as he did. Tonight it's me, congr-
He flinched, knees doing a little dip as his spine gave way for a heartbeat. Zander blinked over his shoulder, blue eyes bright as he met the shaking form of a man holding a shotgun, the weapon still smoking after dumping a payload right into the vampire’s spine. He turned around fully, still holding the first man by the collar, body mostly-drained and fully floppy. Without even a second look, the bloodsucker let the body drop to the ground with a wet slap.
"Did…" He took a step forward, the shaky shotgun wielder taking one back. "You just interrupt me-
"Mr. Cray?"
"-when I’m monologuing?!"
"Mister Cray!"
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Blue eyes blinked again as the third-world warehouse gave way to an open boardroom and the dying sicario with a freshly opened carotid became just a room full of boring old white guys in suits.
And none of them with a British accent, so… especially boring."-ray? Mr. Cray. If I could direct your attention to page four."
Zander opened his mouth to answer but a spike of white hot agony drove itself straight behind his right eye, forcing another blink from him. Sun.
The flat white glare banking off forty floors of glass on the neighboring Seattle skyscraper and stabbing right into his retinas made sure to remind him of the pounding headache his reminiscing had been doing a great job of helping him ignore. The slow throb building behind his teashades had been building for the better part of an hour, most of it during the meeting as opposed to the leadup.And to make matters worse, it was clearly one that had no plans to quit.
Not till the sun set, at least.Unfortunately, he had daytime business to handle and Zoom wouldn’t be a thing for another half-decade at least so he focused his attention on all the gathered suits with water glasses sweating on coasters in front of them.
"I heard you.” Zander rolled his shoulders back against the leather of his chair, voice scraping the bottom of his throat where cartel blood still lingered from two nights ago. "Go on."
A juice box appeared by his elbow, Alexis leaning over his armrest as she held it out for him to take; seal popped with the straw already inserted and bent his way. She looked like the perfect professional employee, something that fooled him not even the slightest bit.He’d seen the look on her face when she held a knife outside the kitchen. Even still… "Thank you, Lex."The plastic straw rose to his lips, a pathetic mouthful of chilled blood compared to the fresh tap of hot stuff down in Mexico. The tomato-forward mix was there to fool anyone with a working human nose, and even underneath the tomato, it was already about a week old past that. The drink wasn’t perfect, sure, but it cooled the throbbing of the sun behind his eyes to something closer to background noise at least. Now, did he look like a kindergartner sucking down a Capri-Sun in an investment meeting that started at the seven figures? Of course. Was a single man at the table going to drop their wrinkly nuts on the mahogany surface and call him out on it? Of course not.The vampire in the room took a longer drag, eyes over the rim of his glasses at the six men in bespoke suits staring back at him.One of them kept talking though as he cleared his throat and picked up where the presentation had died without Zander paying attention, a Wellston Harris; the exact type of man with a face that couldn’t hold a thought without narrating it. And right now one specific thought was obvious the longer Zander kept slurping on that blood pouch, running big and clear across his forehead like a stock ticker.
Zander nodded slowly, letting the blood settle in his gut as he waited for the man to take a breath. He didn’t have to wait all that long, the Harvard Business graduate pausing as the boy in all denim slid a manila folder across the mahogany. The blood settled warm in his gut and he waited for a gap the way you wait for a light to turn.
"YouTube incorporated three months ago.” The folder stopped its slide dead center in front of Wells, neat as a called shot. "I want in on their Series A."
Six grown men all breathed in without looking at each other, Wells opening it like it might have a spider in it. "Mister Cray.” Wellston’s voice was careful, slow, the way you’d talk to a child with too little sense and too much money. “This… this is a video-sharing website."“Yes.”Wells blinked back at that single syllable. “It’s not exactly much of an investment.”“I disagree, Wellston.” Zander nodded back at the man, pulling the straw from his teeth. “I disagree. Just get me in on it.”
"The user base—"
"Is every human being under forty with a modem, gimme like eighteen months." Zander smiled back, not bothering to back down. "Trust me on this one."
"With all due respect, Mr. Cray. Trust is a considerable ask, given…"
"Given I ain't old enough to buy a beer, I know, I know." The man let the sentence drop and Zander didn’t waste a second in picking it back up. "But I have a good feeling about this one. On top of that…" Walter handed him another folder from where the butler stood on the opposite side of Alexis, Zander sending the manila sliding again. “There’s a social networking site coming out of Harvard, Harris. What I’m looking for is a real position in that, something I can really sink my teeth into."
“Again, with respect, sir…” A different suit leaned in this time — a younger face who clearly thought he was as slick as the gel in his hair— made the mistake of not hiding the laugh he forced out through his nose. "Social networking's a fad, MySpace already owns the m—"
"Social media’s the future, man. Same tree as video-sharing, just a different branch.” Zander tapped the table in time with his words. "People want to be seen, want to share, want to show the fuck out. You’re not selling them a product. You’re selling them themselves."
The slick one shut his mouth, Wellston opening his own immediately after.Before the man could start going on again, Zander simply leaned back in his chair and kept going. “Look, gentlemen, I didn't inherit great-granddaddy's money to watch it nap in a bond fund. I want new. I want aggressive. I want blood.”He blinked, leg crossing over the other as Zander raised a finger. “I mean, I want to be on the bleeding edge. Clear enough?”
Papers shuffled, somebody’s pen doing nervous laps on a legal pad before Wells set both palms flat on the table as the man made a bid for safe ground. "And the real estate? The physical holdings? Your great-grandfather held over than two dozen commercial properties alone acro—"
"Dump 'em."
Wellston’s eyes couldn’t have gone wider. "...I'm sorry?"
"Not all of it. I’m not retarded.” Zander shook his head, waving off the Harvard man’s impending panic attack. “At most seventy percent.” The laugh he let out did not seem to help the mood in the room, Wellston’s mouth looking like he’d bit into a lemon that had been on the shelf long past the sell-by date. “Yeah, seventy sounds right.”“Mister Cray…” “Keep the waterfront and downtown properties, big prime stuff, sure, anything with long-term tenants, sure, but what I’m talkin’ about here is simple.” Zander’s hand was still up, palm facing the men in front of him. “Worst performers in the worst areas. Both residential and commercial. Keep the Weatherell property of course but anything on the decline and anything that needs renovations, anything with short leases or too small or all the stupid little vacation houses. I want it all gone by summer '06."
He might as well have said he wanted to blow up Wall Street, the way all six of the financial advisors gaping back at Zander.
"Mister Cray, with…” Wellston blinked, the man’s mouth open for a moment. “Again, with respect, that’s an unprecedented sort of…” The man seemed to be fighting between insults and actual advice, almost mouthing the word ‘insanity’ for a moment before he managed to catch himself again. “That’s just not done. The housing market has never been stronger, the appreciation alone on those holdings, to sit on them another f-"
"It’s my money, Wells." He watched the man's face do the math and fight the answer. "It’s my money and I want to play with it. If I want to burn it for warmth, I’ll do that." He tapped the table again, a single nail rapping hard as he grinned at the room. “I don’t really care if you think I’m an idiot. I’m pretty sure you didn’t think much of me in the first place.”“Mister Cray…”“Eh.” His hand went up again. “Just do what I want and say I told you so later.”
Wells closed the YouTube folder with two fingers, the man fighting the words already. "Your portfolio. Your call, Master Cray." Where'd Master come from all of a sudden? Zander blinked back at him, the vampire still wearing that same grin. Guess Walter’s rubbing off on the whole building.
“If I may, though, if it’s not too much trouble of course…” Wellston stared back at him, lip twitching. “Might I ask where all these… stellar insights are coming from?”
Zander let the grin go a little wider, fangs still tight and secured away. "Good feeling about the future, Harry."