Rule of Vampire (8 page)

He got up, hiding his face, and yelled, “I’m going upstairs to play video games!”

In his room, he watched his blackened, blistered skin slowly smooth out and return to a whitish hue––paler than he remembered, but normal-looking enough. It took longer and was more painful that he would’ve thought. In the movies, the vampires just sort of reverted. You didn’t see the pain or the time it took. And you couldn’t tell from watching movies how strongly the bloodlust would overtake you.

Thank God he was a big horror movie fan, though. It surprised him, how easily he accepted what had happened to him. Maybe thanking God wasn’t right. Maybe he should be thanking the Devil. In any case, Stu readily accepted his new condition––no, he
reveled
in his new condition.

He sat there on his bed, getting hungrier and hungrier. He idly wondered if he should go downstairs and… well… eat his parents. Then he pondered why he would consider doing such a thing and feel so little guilt.

He also discovered that all his old doubts were gone: Was he good-looking enough, smart enough, and cool enough? Was he going to flunk algebra? Was he going to be able to find a girl to go to prom with who measured up to his standards––and those of his friends? With the disappearance of these doubts, Stuart’s conscience also seemed to fade. It was more a logistical problem, this eating of parents, than a moral problem. He needed a home base to hide out in during the day and his parents were paying the rent, so he’d let them live.

At sunset, Stu headed out the front door without a word. He spent the hours of darkness exploring his new abilities. He found that he could scoot up to the mansions on the hills above town without being seen and look in the windows at the popular rich girls as they undressed, and they couldn’t see him.

He got within inches of a number of pedestrians, who also couldn’t seem to see him if he didn’t want them to. It was a matter of moving away from where their eyes went and into the places where their eyes didn’t go. He could smell their blood, and some of them were sweet and some were sour and some were diseased, and others were just begging to have their blood sucked.

He was quick and silent, and when he idly wished he could move a boulder to get a better look at Sandra Carpenter as she practiced her cheerleading moves in the nude, he tried it and found he was able to lift it out of the way with ease.

At four in the morning, his hunger overwhelmed him, and when he stumbled across Jim Harker walking home from a bar, he grabbed the old man and dragged him into the bushes. When his victim began to shout, Stuart grabbed him by the throat and crushed his windpipe.

As he sucked the dead man’s blood, Stuart regretted killing him so quickly. He’d gotten a hint of a taste of living blood, and it had been far tastier than what this corpse provided.

Next time. There are going to be many next times,
he thought with satisfaction.

The next day, he slept in, ignoring his father’s reminder that he needed to find a summer job and not laze around the house all day. He did laze around the house all day, and when his father came home that afternoon and started to reprimand him for it, Stuart simply looked him in the eye and the human stuttered to stop and backed away.

Stuart waited near the window, watching for the sunlight to fade. It seemed to take forever, but finally the rays coming through the window lost their sting. He got up, got dressed, and headed out the door before his parents could see him.

He repeated many of the activities he’d engaged in the night before, but he was already losing interest in the girls his own age. He wanted someone more like that woman––that vampire––Jamie. Someone mature and sexy and willing. She’d led him on all evening there on the beach, and when she’d tried to slow him down, it had made him angry and he’d tried to force her.

He admitted that to himself. As a vampire, he could see that he’d been a weak human. He had deserved to be taken down. He shuddered to think what would have happened if those two cops hadn’t come along. He’d be dead meat, just like old man Harker, whose dull eyes had become even duller as he died.

Stuart was, if anything, hungrier than he’d been the night before, but again he saw it as a logistical problem. Killing citizens like Harker, who was a pharmacist as well as a drunk and pretty well-known around town, was going to be noticed.

He wandered down to the beach where, during the summer, the homeless gathered like flies. He picked off an old bag lady who had wandered away from the others and sucked her dry. She tasted slightly better than Harker had, but only because she was still alive while he was draining her.

As the blood flowed down his throat, Stuart remembered leaving Harker’s body looking almost untouched by the side of the road, and it occurred to him that in the movies, the dead sometimes came back. When he was done with the old lady, he idly twisted her head, tore it off, and threw it into the bushes. Let her try to come back from that!

By the third night, Stuart was bored. And he was lonely.

He visited his friends, one by one. He found them in bed and crawled in with them. Pete was properly freaked out and tried to smash his face in. He was the strongest guy Stuart knew, but he was like a little child compared to Stuart. Stuart left him dead, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling, a look of disgust on his face.

Greg screamed like a little girl and almost slithered away, he was so small and wiry, but Stuart caught him crawling out the window and bit into his thigh, and found that he could drain a human from any part of their body. When he was finished, he picked Greg up and arranged him on the bed, glassy eyes staring in horror.

Jimmy woke up and then just froze. When Stuart started sucking on his neck, Jimmy said quietly, “Please don’t.” Stuart left him faceup on his bed with a puzzled expression on his dead face.

All three of them were waiting for him when he went out the next night, and he took them down to the beach, where they each picked off a homeless person. Stuart decided to go upscale and grabbed a tourist. Her blood was clean and fresh, and he knew that his homeless-eating days were over.

They piled into Stuart’s pickup and went roaring down the coastal highway. All three of his progeny were still hungry, so when they saw the three hitchhikers, they stopped.

One of the vagrants got away, but Stuart wasn’t worried. Who was going to believe an old bum, anyway? Especially if he started shouting about vampires and stuff.

His buddies all stayed at Stuart’s place the next day. His parents didn’t object. They seemed to be afraid of him.

Stuart loved that.

Chapter 13

Terrill stood at the center of the enclosure, his eyes closed. He could sense his Maker––who was destined to become his Maker yet again––stepping up behind him and felt him gently lift the collar of Terrill’s shirt. Michael’s fangs went in smoothly––no other vampire had had so much practice––and Terrill’s life drained away.

His last thoughts were
Will I still be human? Or will I be vampire?

And then he died a second time.

#

Terrill sat up, and it was clear from Michael’s startled reaction that he hadn’t been out for long. He didn’t remember any dreams or nightmares. It was as if he’d simply closed his eyes.

He was in pain. He could feel the outlines of the cross fused to his chest, and he lifted his shirt to see his flesh blooming bright red around its contours.

Michael looked surprised. “Interesting. But maybe it’s for the best, Terrill. It will be a constant reminder that you are like no one else, living or dead.”

Terrill almost couldn’t speak, he was in so much pain. He stood, lowered his shirt, and put his hand to his neck, his fingers feeling the two puncture wounds. He turned up the shirt’s collar.

“Now,” Michael said. “Here’s what you must do.”

#

“She isn’t here,” Terrill said when he finally emerged from the hideaway.

Sylvie looked disappointed. He’d called her on his cellphone and told her to come and get him. The plan to avoid the Council vampires by sneaking Jamie out of the other side of the thicket was useless for now.

“Should we wait for her?” Sylvie said worriedly.

“I’m not sure she’ll want to see us. If she sees us waiting, she might not appear at all. No, I think we’ll have to surprise her.” Sylvie didn’t seem to notice how distracted he was.

The two Escalades rolled up. The lead SUV’s passenger-side window, which was facing away from the sun, slid down. Clarkson motioned for Terrill to come over.

“No luck?” she asked.

“She was here recently,” he said. Clarkson’s blank stare made him want to explain more than he needed to. “I could tell; there were women’s clothes all over the place. Anyway, she was here.”

“Well, on a day like this, she’d better be under shelter. Still… maybe she’s moved up in the world again. You know, from homeless to whore.”

Terrill saw Sylvie wince. “That was uncalled for,” he said.

Clarkson looked contrite, but she didn’t apologize. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“You said you’d give me two more days. We’ll ask around; we’ll come back tomorrow; we’ll drive around and see if we don’t catch a glimpse of her. It’s not like the town is so big that it’s impossible to track her down.”

After Clarkson assented to their plan, Terrill and Sylvie drove down every road in Crescent City more than once, but found no sign of Jamie.

They waited until noon the next day, then swooped down on the hideaway and repeated what they’d done the day before. This time, Clarkson questioned why Sylvie was driving away.

“I don’t want to spook Jamie,” Terrill said.

Clarkson glanced at the two huge black SUVs and shook her head. “You’re up to something, but whatever it is won’t work. You’re coming back to London with me. I’ll give you one more day.”

Sylvie was getting more and more anxious. They spent another day driving up and down the roads, as if they expected Jamie to magically appear. Since the sun was shining brightly, that seemed unlikely, but Terrill didn’t say anything, because Sylvie seemed to need to be doing something,
anything,
to find her sister.

He grunted a couple of times when they drove directly into the sun, and she glanced at him curiously. “You OK?”

“Yeah,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Must be something I ate.”

She accepted that explanation. Terrill had still been trying to learn what, when, and how to eat human food, and sometimes he’d gotten it wrong. A little too much grease or a little too much spice, and his human stomach had rebelled.

The cross on his chest burned. It was as painful as when it had first burned into his vampire body, and this time the pain didn’t fade. He’d taken off his bloody shirt the previous night, thankful that the weather was cool enough for him to cover the wounds with a sweater. His skin was red, raw, and festering.

“You’ll always feel the pain,” Michael had said. “It will always be a reminder of what you are.”

Not that there was much chance Terrill would forget it. His strength and speed were returning. Sylvie had knocked a salt shaker off the table at the diner during breakfast that morning, and his hand had shot out and caught it before it fell more than a few inches. Thankfully, she was looking out at the ocean at the time and didn’t notice. After that, he’d purposely tried to move more slowly, trying to mimic the way he had moved when he’d been human.

He had so much energy that after he and Sylvie made love that night and she drifted off to sleep, he got dressed and went for a run. When he returned, it was as if he hadn’t exerted himself at all.

But there was one thing that didn’t come back: the fading of human concerns, the loss of conscience, the constant vigilance, and the hunting for weakness in others––the soulless part of being a vampire.

He still loved Sylvie as much as ever. He still felt no desire to kill humans or feed upon them. On that second afternoon, he managed to get away for an hour and buy some raw meat at the local butcher shop, and he ate it for the fuel, trying to ignore how good it tasted, trying to ignore the memory that living flesh tasted so much better and human flesh tasted best of all.

By the end of the third day, it was clear that Jamie wasn’t coming back. She’d disappeared. The Escalades followed Sylvie and Terrill back to their motel. He wasn’t surprised when he heard the knock on the door later that night.

“I’ve given you all the time I can,” Clarkson said. She didn’t seem upset, but it was clear that there would be no argument.

“Please,” Sylvie said. “Give us one more day.”

“I can’t. If I don’t report back, they’ll only send someone else, and I assure you, whoever they send next won’t be so patient or gentle. You agreed to come with me after ten days, and your time is up.”

“I’m not going,” Terrill said. “Don’t be too eager,” Michael had warned him. “React just as you reacted to me.”

“You have no choice,” Clarkson said.

“Yes, I do. I can’t go with you if I’m not alive.”

Sylvie looked alarmed. “What? What are you saying?”

Terrill turned to her and took her in his arms. “I swore I’d never be part of that world again,” he said softly. “I’ve been happy being with you, Sylvie. But I’m mortal now, and my time will come sooner or later, and I’d rather stay the way I am for a short time longer than risk becoming one of
them
again.”

As Michael had predicted, Clarkson’s immediate reaction was to move closer to Sylvie. Clarkson was several inches taller and loomed over her. The vampire didn’t touch the girl, but the meaning was clear. “Sylvie is going, whether you come or not,” she said.

Terrill hung his head as if defeated
. This is exactly the way it would’ve played out if Michael hadn’t shown up,
he thought.
The only difference is, I’m no longer the weak human I used to be.
But the Council vampires didn’t know that, and he had to hide it for as long as possible. It was an advantage they wouldn’t see coming.