The Barsoom Project

A woman caught Gwen’s eyes. She stood near the wall, pudgy as the rest, watching as the Beverly Hills Diet faded into the Jane Fonda Geriatric Workout and more general merriment. She stood out: she wasn’t laughing, or even smiling. She seemed lost. Her straggling crimson hair and large green eyes made her improbably waiflike.

Green? Gwen knew she was too far away to see the woman’s eye color. Had they met? Gwen suppressed the urge to walk over and ask if she needed help, and look at her eyes.

“-Avram set up a booth and started doing tricks. I got propositioned by a burly blacksmith type. I took him up on it, and that used up half the afternoon.” Marie’s voice had the kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge in it that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Avram didn’t react at all. Marie must have trained him to be civilized and modern about her peccadilloes. Gwen wondered how and where his passive aggression emerged. Ollie wasn’t passive at all. Extramarital tactophilia-flirting-was part of their lifestyle, but any man who crossed a specific line was courting murder. Suddenly, and quite unspectacularly, Gwen’s dislike of Marie crystallized.

“-time I came back, Jeffrey and Carole and Blag were missing. Off getting laid, maybe. Blag and Carole came back around sunset. Jeffrey didn’t. We thought we’d better get back to camp-”

Where had Gwen seen the redhead woman before? It came to her with a jolt: the dossier on the next Fat Ripper. Sure, she was one of the players.

Even in a static holo, there had been something about her that stood out, some potential for action, some suppressed energy that impressed Gwen. Or at least caught her attention. The back of her neck itched. She needed Ollie. His memory was better than hers.

“-what I said, Gwen?”

With a start, Gwen realized that for the first time Marie had said something which required a response.

There was challenge in the way Mazie leaned across the table. That, and two words Gwen’s memory fished out of the monologue, gave her the answer. “You chewed garlic, just in case. Because the villagers didn’t want your spices. Were you already thinking vampires?”

Marie slapped the table, and Gwen captured her salad before it jiggled over the edge. “Exactly! And Carole thought she’d seen gargoyles. The vampires lived on the heights, in the minarets. Come night, they started swooping down on us. We broke into the buildings to fight there. The doors weren’t even barred. The people must have given up long ago.”

Avram said, “I got my troop into the smithy-”

“We started a fire,” Marie said. “We thought it might help. My blacksmith, Hath-Orthen, he broke down and told us all about it. The vampires owned that town. The tops of buildings were theirs, and stairs didn’t go there. They’d been there longer than anyone could remember. They kept alcohol and recreational drugs out, and anything else that might ruin the flavor of blood.” Marie’s attention snagged on the forkful of salad she was waving in the air. She put the fork in her not-quite-empty bowl and pushed it away. “I have to tell you, something permanent happened to my appetite that night. I had to think of myself as food to figure out how to fight vampires. Garlic didn’t keep them away. We decided they like flavoring. Random flavoring, that they don’t like. And we couldn’t count on any help. The locals wanted us to stay so twenty of them would live longer.”

“Your order, madam?” The voice came from behind Gwen, but she didn’t have to turn, just reach back over her shoulders and found Ollie’s strong, chubby arms and wrapped them around her neck. One of his fingers unobtrusively brushed a nipple, and she felt a shiver of pleasure race along her bones. She leaned back for a deep kiss.

Marie was polite enough to stop talking, but not enough to look away. She was staring at them when they broke for air.

Ollie was about five nine, and fifty pounds over the average. That was actually a great improvement: when they met, you could have added another sixty pounds to that estimate.

Ollie nodded to Marie and Avram. He slid into the seat next to Gwen, still holding her hand. Gwen felt the tension leaving her in a wave, lost in Ollie’s warm, wide smile. She sighed. “My lord and master.”

“The Goddess who dances in my heart.” He bent forward and kissed her again. “How ya doing?”

“Much better now.” Her eyes flickered sideways, indicating Marie, who had continued to chatter, as if frantic to get her story out before Ollie swallowed Gwen’s attention totally “There were vampire sentries on the ground floors, and no light. First building we went into, we were swarmed! After that we rolled barrels of brandy down into the basements. First the brandy, then throw in torches, then wood. That worked. We turned the minarets into chimneys! But it took us till nightfall, and some of the vampires escaped the fire and some of our own started coming to life-”