The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 1): Death of an Immortal: Page 5

  “I remember never having to answer to another human again.”

  “Even Michael?”

  Terrill laughed. He never seemed to have any doubts. He reveled in his existence and did as he pleased, but had an eerie sense of how far to push it. Michael the Maker had advised Horsham to follow Terrill.

  “The bastard is a survivor, I’ll give him that,” Terrill said, strangely subdued.

  Michael had been quiet for years, eating only when he needed to, the rest of the time holed up in his library, reading book after book about human philosophy and religion. It was strangely disturbing to Horsham. To all vampires. What was he doing? they wondered. Why was he acting that way?

  When Michael had simply disappeared one day, no one had been surprised. Perhaps he’d just grown weary, had walked out to greet the day’s dawning. Or perhaps he had gone to ground, only to emerge centuries or millenniums later. He’d done it before.

  Michael had been a kind of mentor to other vampires.

  Terrill felt no such obligation. He led by example, and it was a bad example for most vampires who emulated his aggressiveness without having his uncanny sense of self-preservation.

  “The fewer vampires, the less they notice us. The less they notice us, the better,” Terrill said, when Horsham realized he was now the third-oldest––second-oldest?––vampire in existence. Horsham almost never felt fear, but when his traveling companion (he wouldn’t say friend) said this, he felt a tinge of trepidation. Not only wasn’t Terrill following the Michael’s example and helping his kind, he was actively working for their doom.

  Horsham almost broke away from Terrill at that moment.

  He would always regret that he hadn’t.

  #

  The Twilight landed in New York and refueled. Horsham had lost about four hours of night, which was too bad. They landed in Portland five hours later, losing another couple of hours of night. It was nearly midnight; there was time enough to get a late meal, but not to do any business.

  He booked a room at the Benson and then went on the prowl, getting a sense of the town. He got back before dawn and slept until three p.m. It was a dark day, drizzling, so he bundled up and ventured out.

  He got to the Portland Police Bureau’s headquarters just as the day shift was ending.

  Detective Brosterhouse was getting ready to go home when Horsham intercepted him. “Please, detective,” he said. “I flew all the way from London just to talk to you about the Howe case.”

  The big detective sighed, took off his coat, and sat back down at his desk. “What’s your interest in the case?”

  “I’ve been following similar cases in England. I wanted to follow up, see if it matched the details.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  There was a skeptical look in the human’s eyes. Horsham realized he hadn’t thought it through sufficiently. He’d expected a bored civil servant, going through the motions of solving the murder of a prostitute, but was obvious that this Detective Brosterhouse was fully engaged. Horsham had given him a false name, Mr. Harkins, private investigator, and showed him a false ID. But it wouldn’t take long for a real detective to discover who had arrived in Portland from London on this day.

  “I’d like the see the crime scene first, if I may.”

  Brosterhouse shrugged. “Sure. Room 221 at the Travelin’ Inn. Costs thirty-five bucks a night, but watch out for the bedbugs. They bite.”

  “Could I perhaps entice you to walk me through it––everything you’ve found?”

  “We’ve found almost nothing,” the big detective admitted. “The only thing interesting about this case is how much interest there is in it. Normally, the murder of a prostitute only grieves the family, and half the time not even them. But this one? First that cop from Bend, and now you. So what is it about this case that interests you?”

  “Cop from Bend?” Horsham’s interest was piqued.

  “The victim was an old girlfriend of his,” Brosterhouse said. “If Carlan hadn’t allegedly been in Bend when the murder occurred, I’d have bet anything it was him. I still think it might have been.”

  Bend was a nearby town, apparently. Horsham had a strange inkling that there was a connection there.

  The mighty Terrill, terror of Europe for centuries, vicious and remorseless, had stopped killing many years before. He’d disappeared.

  Why? What had changed? Horsham remembered how Michael had been at the end, seeming almost regretful. But most of all, he remembered how he himself had once begun to question the killing of humans. How Mary had changed him, until…

  Horsham was aware of the irony. Once, Terrill had been a vampire’s vampire, and it was Horsham who had had doubts, who had had regrets. Once, it was Terrill who had killed indiscriminately and cared for no one and nothing, and Horsham who had looked for villains, who had cared for the innocent and the weak.

  With one act, Terrill had changed Horsham forever. Without Mary, Horsham had lost all interest in humans, except as food. It was perhaps ironic that Terrill had changed, that they both had changed––but it didn’t matter. Terrill must die. Nobody, human or vampire, would stand in the way of that end.

  #

  So now, unexpectedly, it seemed that Terrill had fed on––and killed––a human again. If it was true that Terrill had somehow grown a conscience, what would he do next?

  Horsham remembered his own response when the human he loved was murdered. Suddenly, he was certain what Terrill would do and where he would go.

  “The girl was from Bend?” he asked.

  “Newly arrived in the big city. A lamb to the slaughter.”

  “Let me buy you dinner, detective. You can tell me what you know.”

  Brosterhouse sat behind his desk like a statue, massive, ponderous. He nodded once. “It couldn’t hurt. This is about as cold a case as it could be.”

  The policeman took him to a steak house, where Horsham picked at an overcooked hamburger while Brosterhouse gave him all the information they had. Which wasn’t much. Which wasn’t really anything at all. Except for one detail.

  “She was untouched, except for the puncture wounds?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it was weird. Someone laid her out and wrapped her up like he gave a damn. Drained her of blood and then treated her gently. Sickos, weirdos, creeps. There are all kinds, all kinds.”

  The detective didn’t have much more information than that. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t the real reason Horsham had enticed him out of the police station. Horsham didn’t leave witnesses. Where he went was nobody’s business––especially not a cop who seemed a little too curious.

  They headed back to Brosterhouse’s car, and as they passed an alley, Horsham grabbed the huge detective and threw him into the filth and darkness of the alley as if he was a little child. The cop was fluorescent to Horsham’s eyes. He saw the big man trying to see in the darkness, drawing his gun quicker than Horsham expected, firing a shot and getting lucky, hitting him right between the eyes.

  Horsham stumbled away, running farther into the alley. He could survive almost any wound as long as he fed quickly, but a shot to the head was enough to weaken him, and he ran rather than continue the fight. He’d come back when it was all over.

  A couple more bullets came his way, but both missed him.

  At the end of the alley, Horsham found a homeless man leaning against the brick wall of one of the buildings and drank his blood in seconds. Then he kept going, not stopping to feed further. Staying in darkness, using every instinct developed over centuries of hunting, he made his way back to his motel room without anyone seeing his blood-splattered clothing and smeared face. He fell into bed, still weak. The bullet had fallen out during the nightmarish journey, but the wound to his head still made him dizzy. He’d need a few hours to recover.

  After that, he’d get out of town. The detective would be looking for him. The whole Portland police department would be looking for him.

  But when Horsham didn’t want to
be found, he was nearly impossible to track. He’d find out where Bend was and hope Brosterhouse didn’t remember his curious questions about the town.

  Chapter 10

  Terrill waited in the car outside the Hardaway residence. The woman was cooking in the kitchen, the man had returned home in the last half hour, and there was a light on in a second-story window. Terrill saw the shadow of someone walking past that window. They were all home. What was keeping him rooted to the driver’s seat?

  He got out and slammed the door. The neighborhood was quiet: everyone in their place. Once, he would have found it an ideal place to feed, would have picked a house at random and slaughtered the occupants. It still amazed him that for hundreds of years he had never questioned that humans were food and vampires ruled the night.

  A cat ran across the sidewalk in front of him, giving him a startled glance, as if it had only seen him at the last second. Terrill could stand there, still and quiet, and most people would walk right by him without seeing him. It had once been one of his favorite techniques––letting his meal come to him.

  He took a deep breath, then walked up the sidewalk and the three concrete steps to the door. Then he hesitated and almost turned around.

  He was a murderer. He was the cause of their grief. He hadn’t wanted to do it, he was ashamed, but nonetheless, he was the reason their daughter would never come home. What right did he have to stand at their door, to enter their home, to talk to them, to offer them condolences?

  The door opened before he could knock, and a young woman stood there staring at him.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  She looked like Jamie; but then again, she didn’t look like Jamie at all. In fact, she looked like no one he’d seen since ancient days. Her nose was too long; it could accurately be described as a Roman nose. Her eyes were wide set and large. Her chin was slightly pointed, and she had high cheekbones, a wide, tall forehead, and thick raven hair.

  She looks like she came off a Greek urn, he thought. Each individual feature was a little off, but the whole was stunning.

  “I… I…” he stammered.

  “What does he want?” The old man’s voice was gruff. He appeared to be in his seventies, which meant he had already been near sixty when he’d fathered this girl. It was six in the evening, but Terrill could tell the man was already drunk. He pushed the girl out of the way. “What do you want, buddy?” he said belligerently.

  Jamie and Sylvie’s mother followed, dishrag in hand, looking as though she hadn’t stopped crying in days. It was hard to see either daughter in this beaten-down woman, who was in her mid-fifties, with limp brown hair and heavy jowls.

  “Is this the home of Jamie Lee Howe?” Terrill asked.

  “Not anymore,” the man muttered. “The slut is dead.”

  “Howard!” the woman pleaded. He turned and glared at her until she looked away.

  “I’ll take care of this, Mom,” Sylvie said, and the woman moved away, drifting over to the sink and picking up a dish, taking a few swipes at it with the dishrag and then standing still, staring out the window.

  Sylvie pushed her way to the door again, stopped next to Terrill and waved him down the steps. “We can talk out here,” she said. “Mom’s in no shape to talk about Jamie, and Howard doesn’t have anything to say.”

  “Fuck you,” Howard said. “I’m watching a show…” He stumbled away.

  “He actually does care, in his own way,” Sylvie said. “He did everything he could to keep Jamie in town, but she didn’t want to stay and she was old enough to make her own decisions.”

  She didn’t say anything else, just stood staring at Terrill frankly.

  “I…” Again, his voice faltered.

  “You knew her, didn’t you?” Sylvie said. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re sad.”

  “Yes,” Terrill said, then realized he hadn’t planned to admit it. “I mean, I met her a couple of times.”

  “‘Met’ her?” From her tone, Terrill realized Sylvie knew what Jamie had been doing in Portland.

  “For business. She came to me for a life insurance policy. I represent Prestigious Insurance.”

  “Oh.” She was obviously disappointed. Then she realized what he’d said. “Insurance?”

  “She wanted to make sure that you were provided for––a college fund, as it happens.”

  “We’ve already got the five thousand from her savings account,” the girl said. “It came in handy; we were late with the mortgage. Howard lost his job a couple years ago and the unemployment checks have stopped coming. His Social Security isn’t enough.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” Terrill said, more and more sure he was doing the right thing. “This payment is contingent on your going to college. It can’t be used for anything else.”

  Sylvie didn’t look happy or unhappy. She just stared at the ground for a few moments. “That’s too bad, because I’m not leaving Mom until she is in good shape,” she said. “Which may be never.”

  “I’m sorry. The terms are quite specific. The money can only be accessed as long as you are in college.”

  She shrugged and gave him a lopsided smile. Her goofy demeanor and classic good looks were irresistible. Jamie was right. She needed to get out of this small town.

  “You can’t live their lives for them,” he said.

  “That’s what Jamie always said. And yet, that’s exactly what she did for me, despite me telling her not to.”

  Sylvie would have had every right to ask him what business of it was of his, but instead, she again got that curious look on her face. “You knew her for more than business, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything, but the answer must have been written on his face. Sylvie laughed, and it was as if she didn’t have a care in the world: a delighted laugh. “I knew it! You’re just her type, all doomed and gloomy.”

  He tried to think of what to say. “Yes, I was screwing your sister. For money.” No, that wouldn’t do.

  “Don’t worry,” Sylvie continued. “I know what Jamie was doing––but knowing her, she was trying to be more than just… just a…”

  “She was more,” he said. “To me.”

  “Yeah, that’s Jamie. Making every job the most important job in the world, whether it’s babysitting or flipping hamburgers or being a… being a whore.”

  Terrill stared at her in bafflement.

  “You’re wondering how I can say that,” Sylvie said. “You’re wondering why I’m not crying, why I can still laugh. Well, mister, someday I’ll cry. Maybe I’ll never stop crying, but not now.”

  “She talked about you,” he said.

  “Oh, let me guess. Her brainy sister? Her amazing sister? Well, Jamie always was a little starry-eyed. I’m not like that. Jamie just got unlucky, that’s all. She met the wrong guy at the wrong time. It happened, and now I have to take care of Mom. And Howard, even Howard. He isn’t a bad guy, just sort of pathetic.”

  Terrill could see she wasn’t going to change her mind. It was time for a change of plans. “She made me executor of the policy,” he said. “It says that you have to stay in school, but doesn’t say where or for how long. I’m sure we can find a way.”

  “You sure you can’t just give me the money?”

  If I have to, I will, Terrill thought. But having gotten a good look at her parents, he suspected that Sylvie would end up seeing very little of it.

  “Why don’t we meet for lunch tomorrow?” he suggested.

  “OK. We can meet at the Black Bear restaurant at 1:30. That’s my lunch break.”

  “I thought you were going to the community college?”

  For the first time, she looked troubled. It was as if the frown didn’t fit her face, as if she was pressing the lines into her perfect skin. The expression disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “I had to drop out. We can talk about that tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We will. I can’t meet you until the evening, however. How about after your shift?”<
br />
  “OK. Come by at five.”

  He nodded.

  She stuck her hand out. “Thank you, Mister…?”

  “Terrill,” he said, amazed at the sound of his own name. He hadn’t used it in hundreds of years.

  He shook her hand. It was warm and dry, and a charge seemed to go up his arm. She was looking at him with wide eyes.

  “Until tomorrow evening,” he said, and walked away without another word, now certain he was doing the right thing.

  Chapter 11

  Carlan drove back to Bend, his mind churning. He wasn’t going to accomplish anything in Portland, not with Brosterhouse in the way. Despite Jamie’s restraining order, in his hometown he was still in pretty good standing with his colleagues, many of whom had their own problems with ex-wives and girlfriends.

  He also had a trump card. The last time he’d been in trouble with his boss, Captain Anderson, he’d been relegated to deskwork. There, he’d come across a discrepancy in the inventory of guns. He’d known from the moment that he reported the missing rifles that his boss had sold them for cash, and his boss had known that he knew.

  Carlan was careful not to overuse this useful piece of information. He was satisfied staying a patrolman, where the possibility of bribes for moving violations and other misdemeanors was available. Being a detective entailed more oversight, not to mention that the brass tended to be harsher about any hanky-panky involving felonies.

  Still, he’d saved the information for a rainy day.

  He pulled into the police station parking lot and checked the captain’s parking space. Empty. Damn. He’d forgotten that Anderson took Mondays off. He’d have to wait until tomorrow.

  He pulled back out onto the highway and headed downtown, to Room 23 of the Badlands Motel. The Cadillac Escalade was there, despite it being midafternoon. He thought about knocking on the door, but decided his first plan was still the best plan. When he took this bastard down, he didn’t want there to be any questions.