A small woman of late middle years opened the door to her apartment, at first only a crack, then after an exclamation of $Mon Dieu! she threw it open and reached up to grab Garou’s face and kiss him hard on the lips.
“$Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed again. “Stephan! It has been so long!” Then she stepped back, and her face showed concern. “Ah, Stephan, what has happened --”
“Marie, “he grimaced. “I need your help.”
She ushered him inside to a cluttered but comfortable apartment. He made a face at the heavy aroma of cigarette smoke and the overflowing ashtrays, but eased himself into a chair in the small kitchen as Marie fussed with a teapot. “No espresso for you, young man. You need some special tea.” She kept looking at him while she threw together several powders and leaves in a pot, added water and tossed it all in a microwave.
While the microwave hummed, she turned to Garou. “Now tell me, $mon amour,” she said in a soft voice. “What happened?”
He told her everything. Marie had been an attractive, vibrant woman of forty-seven when they first met twenty-five years ago. She understood his kind, and knew quite a bit about them, and about other things, as well. They had become lovers, for a short, intense time, before parting. Now, at seventy-two, she remained trim and feminine, with Elfin features and regal cheekbones. She wore dark slacks and a blouse that she still managed to fill out very nicely. Even her hair remained thick and dark, although probably assisted. Looking at her brought back strong memories of passionate sex on the living room floor.
“And you survived?” she asked somewhat rhetorically. She poured tea and then leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms under her tits and incidentally lifting them nicely.
He sipped cautiously, from past experience. This brew seemed less offensive than others of hers that he had tasted. “She is a vampire. She spilled her blood to save me.”
Marie’s eyes narrowed. “I have known a few vampires, and I do not trust them. I never have. You know the type, everything is all about them. They are more flighty than my daughter, Yvette, $Mon Dieu, who has a new man or woman every week. Sometimes two or more, twice a week, and she is forty-five.” She snorted. “I will never have grandchildren.”
“Yvette is a high strung artist, “Garou pointed out. “She changes lovers with each new painting. She told me it refreshes her soul.”
Marie made a rude noise. “Lucky you, you were never one of her paramours. All right, then Monsieur Werewolf, what is your pleasure?”
“Aside from you?” he said, smiling, with genuine affection.
She smiled, too, and looked away. “We have been there, $mon ami. Do not bring up the past.” But she dipped into the pocket of her slacks and pulled a pack of filterless cigarettes and fumbled with her lighter, clicking it several times before it lit. She took a long drag, staring at nothing, exhaled a gray plume of smoke and said. “I would have given a lot to remain young like you.”
$One of the reasons people like me rarely enter long term relationships. “You are special, $ma cherie, but like the blood of a vampire, mine is potentially fatal to those who have not been affected by the virus. I will not take that chance, not with you.”
Marie sighed. “We have been there, too.” She looked up, all business. “And you have a woman now, a very serious catch if I am to judge, who has been taken from you in the night by a man who does not hesitate to kill. So, then, what do you have for me?”
He opened his balled fist and offered her what lay in his palm. A squashed lump of silver.
She looked at it and swore. “$Merdre, you took this in the chest and got up again?” She looked at him with a grim smile. “Vampire blood or not, you are very hard to kill, $mon ami.” She carefully examined it before touching it. Looking, sniffing. She held up a hand and left the kitchen, rummaged in the drawers of a small antique cabinet in the living room, then returned with a magnifying glass. Holding it close to her face, she took the bullet from Garou and examined it minutely for several minutes before announcing, “Aha! As I suspected!”
She returned to the cabinet in the living room, extracted several items, and brought them to the kitchen. As she worked, she murmured to herself. “The bullet was hand cast -- who manufactures silver bullets, eh? And the markings of this one are peculiar to a type casting device I have rarely seen. You know they are all pretty much alike, except the manner in which the bullet is poured. In this case, the cast was poured from the top, the business end I believe you crude Americans call it, and there are trace amounts of the casting material still adhering to it, in spite of its recent travels through your handsome carcass.”
She set up what appeared to be a strange looking microscope. Along with the usual assortment of parts, it appeared to have a small cylinder attached at right angles to the main sighting device. The extra cylinder then bent at a right angle to itself, into a separate eyepiece. Marie placed the bullet under the microscope and adjusted the position and focus through the main eyepiece. Then she looked into the second eyepiece.
“Hmm. Interesting, but I can only tell you the provenance of the bullet, not where the shooter is at this moment.”
Garou removed a piece of cloth from one pocket. “Try this.”
Marie examined it for a second, then sniffed it, and her eyebrows went up. “Blood from the attacker?”
Garou nodded.
She gave him a sour look. “And when were you planning to inform me of this?” She turned back to the microscope.
Garou waited patiently. Very carefully, Marie manipulated small controls to rotate and reposition the bullet. After several minutes, she removed it and with a small pair of scissors snipped of a piece of the cloth scrap and placed that under the lens. She spent the next twenty minutes looking through first the main eyepiece, then making adjustments, then looking through the second eyepiece. Finally, she abandoned the main eyepiece altogether and concentrated on the second one.
After a half hour of this she sighed and looked up at him. She leaned back against the kitchen counter and lit up another of her foul cigarettes.
“The bullet was made in Wallachia,” she said, exhaling a long stream of smoke. She pointed at him with the cigarette. “Not Romania, you understand. It is over five hundred years old. Easy to tell by the percentage of pure silver. It was cast originally as a musket ball, then melted and recast, only last week I think, as a nine millimeter. The recent caster and the original caster are the same. The blood tells that tale. And more.” She tilted her head and said softly, “$mon amour, you did not tell me you were hunting Vlad the Impaler.”
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