The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 1): Death of an Immortal: Page 9

  “Hi,” he said, friendly, but not too friendly. He couldn’t invite them in. Pieces of the driver, Shepard, were still scattered around the floor. Fortunately, he hadn’t begun to stink yet.

  “Have you seen Brenda and Dave?” Peggy asked. “We were going to go to a movie.”

  “No, haven’t seen them. Can’t have gone far.”

  Brenda and Dave were tied up and unconscious on the lower tier of Horsham’s bunk bed. He planned to feed on them before heading out after dark.

  “Weird,” Bill said. “They usually take their RV when they go anywhere. Well, if you see them, let them know we were looking for them.”

  “You bet,” Horsham said. He’d automatically picked up the American accent and idioms, and now sounded like he was from the Midwest somewhere. Such mimicking was a talent most successful vampires had. They blended in innocuously or they were discovered: there wasn’t much in between. Horsham was wearing Shepard’s clothes, cheap duds that had probably been bought right there at Walmart, rather than his own tailored outfit.

  He closed the door and went back to his laptop. He’d been online all day with his computer experts back in London, asking them to do a search of all major financial transactions in Bend. He’d also had them hack into the local police database.

  It appeared that Terrill was already on the run. A search warrant had been served on the motel room where he’d been staying. Apparently, from the police chatter, some damning evidence was found. They were looking for his car.

  That was inconvenient. Horsham didn’t want Terrill found by the police first. Then again, as crazy as Terrill had been acting, he was probably still capable of outfoxing the local constabulary. And the pressure was useful. It would force Terrill into the open.

  Horsham had tried to put himself in his old mentor’s place. Why was he here? What was he hoping to accomplish?

  It had to do with the dead girl. Terrill had managed not to feed on humans for a couple of decades. Undoubtedly, he was feeling remorse, just like the last time Horsham had seen him.

  #

  One in a thousand victims of vampires became vampires themselves. There was no way of knowing in advance if it would happen. It almost wasn’t worth worrying about. Most vampires feasted on their victims, ensuring there would be no reanimation. Occasionally, they’d leave a corpse undisturbed to see if it would Turn, out of curiosity, or loneliness, or because they somehow felt sympathetic toward their victim. Almost all these corpses remained cold. Wasted meat.

  Mary was still in her wedding dress, but it had changed in color from virgin white to blood red. She looked peaceful, only a couple of punctures in her neck, almost delicately placed to do the least damage possible.

  “I couldn’t let you go through with it,” Terrill was saying. “I’m sorry.”

  Horsham fell to his knees beside her. The anger didn’t come at first. The thirst for revenge that would sustain the rest of his existence was still buried under the numb realization that she was gone.

  He even let Terrill rest a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. She had died, and somehow Horsham still hadn’t made the emotional connection about who had killed her.

  “If she is meant for you, she’ll come back,” Terrill said. “I couldn’t let you marry a human, Horsham. Never trust a human.”

  The old rule barely penetrated Horsham’s consciousness. He’d heard it a million times, and yet somehow he’d never thought it applied to him. It never applied to Mary.

  He had revealed himself to her only the week before, showing her his true nature. She stood naked next to the bed, staring down at him in shock. Then she made the sign of the cross.

  He cringed, and she turned white at his reaction. She fled, half clothed, back to her room. For the next two days, she spent every moment in the local church, unwilling to even look at him.

  On the third day, she reemerged, a determined look on her face.

  “You shall never kill again,” she said.

  “Very well,” he agreed, uncertain that he could succeed, but intending to expend every ounce of willpower trying.

  “I will save you from damnation,” she said. It was her new goal, her reason for being.

  Horsham didn’t care, as long as she stayed with him.

  Now, Terrill was saying something about being sorry, about wishing he hadn’t done it. The hypocrisy of it suddenly bloomed in Horsham’s mind. He stood and pushed Terrill away, fangs and claws fully extended.

  Terrill lowered his head and left.

  He returned that night, and they sat at opposite ends of the room, staring at Mary’s corpse. She didn’t rise that first night, or the next. But on the third night, as both of them drowsed, the corpse sighed.

  She rose up and looked around her, confused. She looked down at her freshly washed white wedding dress and stared at the backs of her hands. At that moment, the hands became claws.

  She’d be ravenous, Horsham knew. He’d killed a calf each morning of the vigil and now he rose to bring the freshest one to her. She started to eat, and then stopped. She threw the meat onto the floor and looked at the blood on her hands and started to keen. The loud, high, mournful lament froze both vampires where they stood.

  Dawn was breaking; the light came in through a small crack in the curtains and landed on Mary’s feet, which started to smoke.

  “You must get away from the light!” Horsham shouted.

  She looked at him, confused.

  Then it was as if she suddenly understood everything. Horsham would always remember that look, a look that said she knew exactly what had happened and why, and yet accepted it.

  “I love you,” she said. He started to move toward her, but she turned her gaze away, and it was as if the light had gone out for him. He stopped.

  She was looking at Terrill in pity. “I forgive you. I must be your last.”

  She rose up from the bed gracefully. She walked to window and threw open the blinds.

  Terrill and Horsham instinctively jumped to the darkened corners of the room. But Mary stood in direct sunlight. She turned and looked at them, and gave them a beatific smile as she began to flicker. She opened her arms as the flames began to rise from her body, starting at her feet and moving upward.

  She didn’t move as she burned, and the last thing Horsham saw was her smile, enclosed in fire.

  #

  Terrill begged for forgiveness. For days and weeks, he was beside himself with guilt. At first, Horsham was so stunned he didn’t react. And then, the more Terrill pleaded, the more Horsham’s anger grew.

  The day came when he whirled on his mentor and attacked, with everything he had ever learned. But Terrill was stronger and more experienced. He warded off the attack, but maddeningly, he didn’t fight back.

  Horsham finally gave up, collapsing to the floor, sobbing.

  “I’m leaving, my old friend,” was the last thing Terrill said to him. “I hope someday you can forgive me. I, for one, shall never kill again.”

  #

  If Terrill had stuck to his principles, it was possible Horsham might one day have forgiven him. But to kill Mary, and then abandon the very reason he’d killed her! It was too much for Horsham to take.

  He’d grown powerful over the last decades, honing his hunting skills even as Terrill became weak and his skills deteriorated. Next time they met, the outcome would be different.

  The laptop was flashing a message from London. A $100,000 check had recently been submitted from a Prestigious Insurance company to a Sylvie Hardaway. There was no record of Prestigious Insurance existing, and it turned out that the beneficiary was the sister of Jamie Lee Howe.

  The check was being held for confirmation of funds.

  “Cancel the check,” he typed. He had spent the past few years infiltrating every corner of the Internet, preparing for just such a day. “Refuse all access to funds in this account and follow any thread to any other account opened by the same person, no matter what name was used.”

  He close
d the laptop with satisfaction. Terrill was without shelter, hunted, and now he was broke. The trap was closing.

  Dusk was just beginning. There was time for a snack, and then it was on to the hunt. His two meals were awake now and screaming into their gags, squirming and staring at each other, bug-eyed with fear. Horsham decided to keep the meat fresh as long as possible.

  He started on the legs and worked his way up.

  Chapter 18

  Terrill was curled in the corner when he heard scratching at the side of the garage facing the house. A small dog was worrying the ground just outside, unable to smell the vampire but sensing his presence.

  “What are you doing, Tyson?” Terrill heard a voice call from the house.

  The dog yelped and ran halfway across the lawn before turning suddenly and running back to the garage, almost slamming against the wooden slats.

  “What’s in there, boy? A rat? Raccoon?”

  The dog yelped in agreement to both queries.

  “Come back in the house. We’ll check in the morning.”

  Terrill got to his feet, painfully. He needed to feed, but even more importantly, he had to get out of this garage before dawn, which he sensed was only an hour and a few minutes away. He scanned the cluttered junk with his night vision, his gaze landing on a curled-up tarp, stiffened by dried paint. He pulled it off the table and shook the dust off it. It would have to serve.

  He left through the same the opening he had entered by. It had been at least eight hours since the search party had passed by. He started climbing up the hillside, looking for somewhere to hide. It was covered with bare rocks and short juniper trees, but on the other side there was a vacant lot, which connected at one corner with another.

  Terrill made his way farther and farther away from the density of houses, his vision picking up the slightest variations of darkness and light. He was in a subdivision that bordered undeveloped land. He could make out some taller trees on the horizon. It would be close, but he thought he could make it there before sunrise.

  When he finally limped up to them, he discovered that the trees weren’t as tall or dense as he’d hoped. There was a small overhang in the nearby rocks with a large ponderosa leaning against it. He squeezed in between the tree and the cliff. It wouldn’t be enough shade, he knew. He threw the tarp over himself and waited.

  As the sun rose and the light finally hit Terrill’s hiding spot, he realized that the tarp had tiny holes all over its surface. No matter how he positioned himself, at least one of the holes let in light that hit an exposed part of his skin. He tried covering the holes with twigs and leaves, but his efforts seemed to only widen the tears. Finally, he managed to contort his body in such a way that his skin was protected.

  He’d been running for decades, always staying well ahead of Horsham’s hunt. But trying to help Sylvie was probably going to be the end of him.

  Appropriate that a saintly woman would be the reason he ended his exile, because it had been just such a woman who had begun it.

  #

  “Don’t marry him,” Terrill said.

  Mary was in her wedding dress. Horsham had been shooed away, the groom denied the vision of his bride for now: tradition held that if he saw her in her wedding dress before the ceremony, it would bring bad luck. Terrill had escaped unseen from the rest of the wedding party.

  “Oh? Should I marry you instead?” she asked.

  He flushed. He’d been attracted to her from the first time he saw her, but he’d never said a word. He’d always watched her from the corner of his eye as she and Horsham walked hand in hand. He was envious, but he admitted it only to himself.

  “That’s not why I’m saying it,” he said. “He is vampire and you are human. You believe in God; he is godless, soulless.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Mary said, turning toward him. She was tall, nearly as tall as he was, thin and raven-haired. With an oval face, a warm olive complexion, and dark brown eyes, she looked as if there was a Moor somewhere in her Spanish heritage. She was Catholic, and as devout as any human Terrill had ever met. “You have souls, you struggle with right and wrong, just as we humans do,” she continued.

  “You’re wrong,” Terrill said. But he wondered if that was true. Why did he care? Was it for her sake, or Horsham’s? Or his own? What meaning did right and wrong have for a vampire? What did it matter, anyway?

  And yet, if it didn’t matter, why was he talking to her? Why didn’t he just kill her now and be done with it? It would save Horsham the trouble later, when he got tired of her.

  So he told himself. But he simply stared at her as she walked toward him. Such grace and beauty, he thought. He’d been attracted to humans before, but always for carnal reasons, for sex or for food. Never had he hungered for their minds or their souls.

  Mary stood very close to him, and lifted her long, slender hand and caressed his cheek. “You and Horsham know you have done evil, but God will forgive you if you but surrender to Him,” she said softly.

  Terrill turned away before he gave in to the temptation to take her in his arms, lift her up and carry her to his bed. He wanted her, in every way. His fangs extended. Once he started feeding, he would not be able to stop. No vampire could. Did she understand what danger she was flirting with here?

  Someday Horsham would give in to his desire; he would consume her, and she would be gone.

  Terrill couldn’t bear that thought.

  “I do not need your God,” he said. “I have everlasting life just the way I am.”

  “By killing others,” she said. “Your soul is damned, but you do have a soul. It can still be redeemed. It is never too late, if you turn away from sin.”

  “No… I have done too much evil. It is impossible.”

  Her eyes turned soft. Again she approached him, and again she tempted him. This time he didn’t resist. He kissed her and pressed his body to hers.

  “I will save you both,” she whispered in his ear.

  They made love that night, and Terrill discovered, to his amazement, that she was a virgin. He’d assumed that she and Horsham had consummated their love. Instead, she had given herself to him.

  She wanted to save him. She already was well on the way to changing Horsham. But she was greedy in her desire to convert them both.

  As he climaxed, he knew what he had to do. He had to save her from certain destruction, and for that, he needed to kill her.

  Terrill sank his fangs into her neck. She let out a whimper.

  “No!” she said pleadingly. “Not this way.”

  It was too late. He’d begun feeding. He drained more and more of her blood, and it tasted sweeter than any blood he’d ever tasted.

  “Terrill,” she whispered. “I must be your last. You must never kill again. You must turn to God.”

  And then she was still, and he was crying. A vampire who cried. Such a thing had never happened before. Guilt washed through him. What had he done?

  She will come back, he told himself. And when she did, she would see how wonderful it was to be a vampire. She would be one of them, and they would live forever.

  He was sure of it.

  Chapter 19

  Terrill awoke beneath the musty tarp, his festering body covered by insects. Half of the bugs were dead from trying to feed on him; the other half were eating the bugs that had already died. Vampires were not part of the natural food cycle.

  He was in intense pain, which was a rare sensation for him. The solution was meat, but he was too weak to hunt. He threw the tarp aside and shook himself free of insects, living or desiccated. He had bug bites all over him, none of them healed.

  It showed what bad shape he was in. He needed sustenance soon or he would begin to rot like a long-dead corpse.

  Still, he waited until well past midnight before he left his hideout. He had a few hundred dollars in his pocket, enough to buy food, but first he wanted to make sure he had more money in hand. He followed his path back through the vacant lots, having noticed
a small neighborhood commercial center with a couple of banks during last night’s journey to his hiding place.

  He was in luck. The first ATM he tried would take his brand of card. There was no one in sight, not even any cars passing on the major road nearby. It was cold and dark and everyone was home, asleep.

  The machine slurped up the card and he tapped in his PIN. The screen blinked for a few moments and then spit the card back out. He tried again––and again. On the fourth attempt, the machine kept the card. “Illegal transaction,” the screen read.

  A pickup drove by, then circled back around. It roared up next to Terrill and screeched to a stop. Two young men wearing scarves over their faces jumped out and approached him. There was nowhere to run. Once upon a time, these would have been the perfect victims; the kind of men society wouldn’t miss and wouldn’t search for. But Terrill wasn’t looking for victims anymore.

  “What’re you doing, old man?” jeered one of them. “You trying to tell me a bum like you has money in the bank?”

  Old man? Is that how I appear? Terrill wondered. He looked down at himself. His once-fine clothes were filthy and stained. His hands looked dried up. He was shaking.

  “It took my card,” he mumbled.

  The one who had spoken got closer and wrinkled his nose at Terrill’s smell. “You have to have the PIN, dumbshit.” He turned to the other man. “Search his pockets.”

  “Come on, man!” the second one protested. “The guy is filthy. And what’s the point? He’s a homeless dude!”

  “You’d be surprised, Barry. Some of these old bums have rolls of cash like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Oh, good. Tell him my name. That’s just great.” Despite his grousing, Barry walked over and gingerly began searching Terrill’s pockets. The blood flowing through the veins of his neck was only inches away from Terrill. Despite himself, his fangs began to extend.