Ashes-to-Ashes on Chicago Chronicles

Hell's Pasture — Friday, 4 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Fri, 04 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Starlite Motel / West Side / Hell’s Pasture / Drake Hotel Chicago, Illinois — January 4, 1991

The body in the bathtub hadn’t moved in twelve hours. Same position, same folded arms, same parchment skin pulled tight over Mediterranean cheekbones. Sable had arranged the hands that way — crossed at the wrists, some instinct about the dead she’d picked up from a life spent around people who weren’t alive enough to know the difference. The onyx pendant sat in the hollow of the throat. The fluorescent buzzed overhead.

Fool's Errand

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 05:00:00 +0000

Piccadilly London, England — October 1969

The auction house was dark except for a light in the back. A gentleman in a waistcoat with a cup of tea and a paperback novel. The transfer confirmed. A brown paper package tied with string. Sign here, please. Thank you, sir.

Roarke pushed the door open. The bell chimed. He stepped onto the pavement.

A half-second of wrongness. The street was too quiet for Piccadilly at seven. The couple was gone. A car idled at the far kerb with its lights off.

The Auction

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 04:00:00 +0000

Piccadilly / Mayfair Hotel London, England — October 1969

Roarke took Natasha. Black cab to Piccadilly. The auction house was a narrow shopfront between a tailor and a tobacco merchant – dark wood, brass fittings, glass cases full of naval memorabilia. A viewing area. A dozen men in tweed. Cold cuts and tea in proper cups.

He found it in the back corner. Lot 47. Admiral Tourney’s journal. The right-hand page, near the bottom, in handwriting that had gone tight and private: My greatest delight, though, was a memo from A relating that another fragment of the so-called Book of Nod has been – and the page ended there.

Pawns in the Game

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 03:00:00 +0000

Queen Anne’s Mansion South London — October 1969

At 5:47 the bedroom door opened and Lodin stepped out in the suit from the blue suitcase. He listened to the report without interrupting. The customs inspector, the Mesmerize, the hotel, the call. He was quiet for three seconds after Roarke finished.

The Mesmerize. One use?

One use. On a mortal.

Adequate.

He fed somewhere in Mayfair with Natasha and Derek. Came back at quarter past eight with color under his skin. Changed into an evening suit that fit like it had been made for him in this city, which it probably had. Then: all of you, with me, we’re expected.

Settling In

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 02:00:00 +0000

Heathrow Airport / Mayfair London, England — October 1969

They landed at Heathrow at 7:14 AM. October light – thin, watery, apologetic – slanting across wet tarmac. The ground crew directed the Learjet to a private hangar, a long building with high windows that turned the morning into a weapon. Sunlight poured through the glass and puddled on the concrete floor in pale sheets.

The crate sat in the cargo area. Brass fittings catching the light like coins at the bottom of a fountain.

The Trip

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 01:00:00 +0000

O’Hare Airport / Airborne — Atlantic Chicago to London — October 1969

The next evening they loaded the Lincoln Continental and drove for O’Hare. Derek at the wheel. Lodin behind tinted glass. Roarke rode shotgun watching the mirrors the way he’d been watching mirrors since before the Model T.

He saw the tail fifteen minutes in. Dark sedan, two cars back, professional spacing. It had been there since Lake Shore Drive. When traffic compressed at the Circle interchange and every other car bunched together, the sedan held its gap. Wrong behavior. Natasha saw it too. Derek saw it when they told him.

At Ease in the Windy City

Thu, 03 Jan 1991 00:00:00 +0000

Lodin’s Penthouse, The Gold Coast Chicago, Illinois — October 1969

The television was on when Roarke came back from checking the windows. Cronkite. The Moratorium – half a million people on the Mall with their signs and their candles and their belief that holding a placard changes the wiring underneath.

Derek had his boots on the coffee table. Natasha had her Walther field-stripped on a white cloth at the dining table. Julian read the Financial Times in the wingback chair nearest the vault door, one ear cocked toward the steel like a dog waiting for its master’s whistle. Amber was in the kitchen. Garlic and wine and something French.

Rescued from Victory — Nights 3-4, January 1991

Wed, 02 Jan 1991 23:00:00 +0000

Sears Tower / Wacker Drive / West Side 7-11 / Tell It All Offices / Standdown’s Warehouse / Starlite Motel Chicago, Illinois — January 2-4, 1991

They woke in a dead man’s room and the cold had gotten in while they slept — not through the walls (the walls were concrete and steel and built to hold a Prince) but through the glass at the end of the hallway, where January pressed itself against the 107th floor and the radiator had quit because the only person who knew how to fix it was Julian Curry and Julian Curry was in the office down the hall with a bullet through his head.

Vacant Haven — Wednesday, 2 January 1991, 9:30 PM

Wed, 02 Jan 1991 21:30:00 +0000

Sears Tower, 107th Floor — Lodin’s Haven Chicago, Illinois

The town car pulled away from Daley’s and Sable counted the seconds before anyone spoke. Belthazar sat in the front passenger seat with his coat folded across his knees. He hadn’t looked at either of them since the restaurant. The driver was a ghoul with the stillness of someone who had been told not to listen, not to remember, and not to exist unless the car needed turning.

Dinner with Ballard — Wednesday, 2 January 1991, 4:29 PM

Wed, 02 Jan 1991 16:29:00 +0000

Daley’s Restaurant, Gold Coast Chicago, Illinois

The ghoul held the car door at the Hyatt’s lower entrance, and the cold came in like a blade — sixteen degrees and dropping, the kind of January that turns breath to glass before it leaves your mouth. Sable slid into the back seat. Darius followed. Neither spoke. The town car smelled like Armor All and something botanical, an air freshener that cost more than her first month’s rent on State Street.

Welcome to Chicago — Tuesday, 1 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Tue, 01 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Skyway / Succubus Club / The Cave / Field Museum / Soldier Field Chicago, Illinois

The Skyway was two lanes of frozen asphalt and the skyline getting closer. Gary shrank in the rearview mirror the way a bruise fades — slowly, and you kept touching it to make sure.

Twenty-five minutes. That was the distance between a dying city of seven vampires and a living one with a hundred. The Wastelands rolled past the windows on both sides — tank farms, refineries bleeding orange flame into the January dark, the skeletal remains of factories that had closed before either of them learned to hunt. The Cutlass rattled over expansion joints. Behind it, Sable’s Buick held a steady two car lengths.