The Vampire Files, Volume Five, page 63
part #11 of The Vampire Files Series
I’ll carve that on your gravestone.
“Be assured, I’ll have a long head start before you’re set free. I know you won’t be persuaded to a sensible neutrality toward me, but I truly have nothing against you. You’re no different from any other animal succumbing to instinct. You lack the capacity for—”
“Ya want in the union?” I asked. My voice had turned reedy. It was hard to draw in enough air to speak. “Why dint ya say so? I’da put th’ word in.”
“You waste yourself.”
No doubt. I needed him to underestimate me.
“And you can’t even see it. But you have my word: three nights, and I’ll let you go. Oh—your friends won’t miss you. I repaired the damage made when I broke into your little lair. I also left a suitably misleading message with that detective fellow’s answering service. They’re under the impression that you’ve gone off to do a bit of thinking. Exasperating, perhaps, but they won’t look for you.”
Would Escott question that? Or Bobbi? The way I’d been acting lately…
“This won’t be pleasant for either of us, but I will be civil to you for the duration. Once this is over, you’ll never see me again, and that should be some consolation.”
Dugan raised the beaker to his lips and took his first taste. It must not have been to his liking, to judge by his expression. He had to force himself.
He drank all of it, which was more than was needed. A sip would do the job—if it worked. I stared the way you do at a car accident. It’s bad, but you can’t stop until you see the worst. What would it be, a dead body or a dying one? I was the one dying, though. I’d lost so much life, and he was drinking away the rest.
Yet as I lay there, weak and starving, I began to laugh, very softly.
He’s got it wrong.
I used up what little strength remained, laughing.
If he thought me insane, well and good.
His eyes were strange, very bright. It would be hard getting him to think I was crazy. He was so far gone himself.
“What is it?” he asked. Suspicion from him now. I had to be more careful.
“You…”
“What?”
Huh. Had to finish it, give him a reply. Something to mislead. “You…look funny, Gurley Hilbert.” I trailed off drowsily. Not an act—I was shutting down the same as I did at dawn.
He disliked the distortion of his name, but his smug smile returned. I hoped that meant he thought himself to still be fully in control of this two-legged animal. Hell, he was in control, but it wouldn’t last. He’d made a big mistake letting me get so weak.
“That pettiness doesn’t matter to me. You don’t see that I…I don’t—”
Then he abruptly broke off, falling from the chair, whooping and gagging.
Drinking blood is not something people just do. There’s only so much an ordinary human can take before getting sick. Even with my change making the stuff taste good, it had taken months before my mind got used to the idea itself and accepted it. How much worse was it for this fastidious, fancy-pants society swan. You can’t think too much on the process, and Dugan was obsessed with his intellectual superiority. Whatever was going through his mind…he’d have to quash it thoroughly. Odds were he’d find it impossible. Minds like his had no off switch.
But was his reaction a result from taking blood in general or my blood in particular?
Until that miracle in Escott’s hospital room, I’d have bet on the former. Not so sure anymore. A vampire’s blood had saved a sick man from dying, but what would it do to a well man? Make him healthier?
No matter. The bastard’s got it wrong.
This had happened to me before, but the woman who’d forced me to change her had gotten the ordering right. If Dugan had somehow made me drink his blood first, and then taken from me, I’d have been worried. He’d left out that step. We were both in strange waters with this variation.
I wasn’t going to tell him about it, either.
Pyrrhic victory to Jack Fleming, maybe.
He moaned, but it sounded more like ordinary disgust than physical pain. Escott hadn’t reacted, but he’d been unconscious.
If I could just lift up a bit to see what was—
Then my eyelids suddenly closed on their own.
Death’s own silent chill seized my body.
A relentless progress, feet, legs, trunk, it was like being buried in snow, very snug, very final. I’d been through this before, too. Didn’t like it, but better than getting skinned.
I’d expected this, but still felt a hurt surprise.
My death would mess up Dugan’s plans. Cold comfort, but serve him right. He didn’t understand how vulnerable I was to blood loss. He’d ignored things while I bled. He had literally talked me to death.
I sought that summer day, and it flooded around me, sweet and warm. Bobbi held me safe until it was time to drift free.
It was very like those moments when I went invisible, but even that formless state had weight, keeping me bound to a physical world. Now I shrugged it off, lifting above myself, wonderfully light.
The clay I’d left behind was in poor shape. The face had gone terribly gaunt, fingers curled into grasping claws, outstretched arms so desiccated that the shape of the bones showed through the gray flesh. He’d been through much pain, but that was finished now. No more suffering for him, the poor bastard. The me that floated above him was unsure of what to do next now that having a body was of no further importance.
The other man in the room finally got off the floor and went to check on the remains. No amount of shouting or slapping of the face would animate that corpse.
The man rushed out of my field of view. I kept staring at me, reluctant to say good-bye. Once I left, that would be the end of it. No more ties to this world. No more…
Bobbi—she won’t know what’s happened.
That wasn’t anything I could fix. What was done was done. I had to go soon.
I can’t just leave her.
I hesitated. And thought. And thought some more.
And came to see what lay ahead.
What she’d go through—I couldn’t do that to her. I’d carry the remorse with me forever. But weren’t you supposed to shed that at death? Apparently not. I could deal with my private failures and mistakes, but not the wrongs I’d inflicted on others. Added up, they were worse than my time in hell hanging from the meat hook.
But this was out of my hands. Someone had taken my life and all chance to make things right with anyone. Bobbi would never…
The helplessness returned again. My regret had weight like a thousand anvils, and it dragged me toward the empty shell below. I hovered close to what had been familiar features. His mouth sagged, and his eyelids were at half-mast over dulling orbs. That was a dead man’s face. I didn’t want to sink into it and pushed away, just a tiny distance.
Bobbi will look for you and cry and wonder and worry and never know…
She deserved better than that. I couldn’t let her go through what I had endured when my lover, Maureen, had disappeared. For years I’d searched, always wondering; the grief and anger and the not-knowing had eaten me hollow.
I brushed against the cold, leaden husk and recoiled. How could I possibly take up its burden again?
I couldn’t. That wasn’t for me anymore.
It was over; I had to leave.
At the end of the day, at the end of life, it’s the same for us all. We get the answers we’ve always sought. Things are finally clear. Everything would turn out all right. Bobbi would go through a bad stretch but get past it. Decades from now, at some decisive future point, her time would come, and she would hover like this over her body. I’d be there waiting for her—
Unless she made the change and became Undead.
A small chance, but possible.
Then she would live on and always wonder and never know and perhaps blame herself, just as I had. Only she’d never find me. She would never find me.
I couldn’t allow that.
I had to get back to her.
Desire and will added weight, and I sank lower. There was an invisible barrier between me and my cooling flesh. It seemed permeable, but I sensed that would not last long, growing thicker and more difficult to breach the longer I delayed.
With hard effort, I pushed past it and instantly felt the awful press of gravity dragging me into agony and blackness.
RELUCTANTLY I came to, the taste of cold animal blood on my tongue and clogging my throat. I gave in to a convulsive choking swallow and got most of it down. Whatever reviving magic it possessed began spreading through my starved body. Everything woke up at once: the constant pain, the helplessness, the rage, and especially the hunger. That hurt the worst.
Someone held my head at an awkward angle and had a cup to my lips. He cursed as the stuff sloshed past my mouth. I got another gulp down and another, and then it was gone. I still hurt, still needed—
“More,” I whispered.
Dugan stared. There was a smear of my blood on his cheek. “It’s disgusting.”
“You’re the one…who wants this.”
He didn’t move. He seemed to be having second thoughts.
“More…or I die.”
“You won’t. You’re immortal.”
There’s no arguing with an idiot. My eyes shut again, and I didn’t respond when he slapped me.
That worked. He hurried away and returned with more blood. I didn’t want to gorge, but couldn’t stop. My previous out-of-control overfeedings had been to sate an addiction; this was pure survival. That was what I told myself, and from the way the stuff gusted through me, sweetly filling out the corners, it was the truth. I’d come that close.
After several trips upstairs and back, Dugan must have run out of stock; he stood over me for a time, watching and asking variations of “Are you all right?” at intervals until I mumbled at him to shut up.
That seemed to reassure him. He went up and didn’t return. He left the basement light on. An oversight, perhaps. What had happened must have spooked him badly.
That made two of us.
I kept still, resting, recovering, thinking of ways to kill him. None seemed a brutal or painful enough payback.
My brain cleared; I listened to his movements, heard the splash of water. Yeah, things had gotten very messy; he’d want to clean up. Wish I could. This place had running water, electricity, I’d not yet heard a phone. It was information, perhaps useful, perhaps not.
Then he paced. Restlessly, uneven, up and back in a not-very-large room, to judge by the number of steps he took.
Then things went quiet. I thought he’d fallen asleep until a very faint scratching sound came through the floor to me…a pen on paper. The son of a bitch was writing.
What would it be? A harrowing and heroic account of his first feeding? Perhaps another essay arguing the social practicality of killing off inferiors or maybe a scientific record of his reaction to my blood. How about a grocery list? Memo to self, stop at butcher shop for another gallon…
I’d recovered enough to laugh again, softly.
The other me turned up again at last, walking into view the same as a real person. He looked sad now. He was right, I’d had my opening to escape and chose to return. Neither of us had reason to believe Dugan’s promise about freedom on the third night. He would kill me and put what was left where it would never be found. Bobbi would still never know…No, dammit. Stop thinking like that.
I would figure out something. I would get back to her.
Things had improved, such as they were. I’d taken in enough blood to ease my belly pain and allow me to think. I didn’t feel very smart at the moment and looked to my benign doppelgänger for suggestions.
He shrugged. “What would Kroun do?”
That one was easy: not get caught in the first place.
His extra caution, not letting even me in on where he spent his days, had worked well. Of course, Dugan didn’t know the man was a vampire, having assumed I’d been the one who saved Escott.
Unless Dugan wanted me to think that. No, let’s keep this simple. He would have said or asked something by now. He had a trapped audience; there was no way he could resist crowing about his cleverness.
Had Kroun been here, he’d probably have tried hypnosis. It wouldn’t have worked. Hurley Gilbert should be locked in the booby hatch down the hall from Sonny. Even if I’d been free and clear of giving myself a fatal headache from the attempt, the old evil-eye whammy didn’t impress members of their club.
“Anything else?” I muttered, confident that the other me had the benefit of my internal reply.
“What about Escott? How would he get out of this?”
He’d be dead if his arms looked like mine did now. Otherwise, he would listen, learn, and use any little shred of information to his advantage.
Dugan’s pen scratched away, fast and without pause. He was just bursting with thoughts tonight. He liked dark green ink on thick notepaper. When done writing, he used his handiness with origami to fold the paper into whatever shape he wanted, which was a very unique way to file things. Was the upstairs of this place filled with little paper sculptures, each one bearing his thoughts? He could make cranes, giraffes, boats, and once left a small paper coffin where I would find it. He’d not written on it, but I got the message that he would be back. Too bad for me I’d let other concerns crowd it out.
“How about Dugan himself?” asked the walking-around me. “What would he do?”
Manipulation. That was his specialty: getting people to go along with him against their better judgment. No one even thought to disbelieve him, such was the effect of his brand of charm. He exploited their weak points. He had plenty of his own I could use against him, but he would be suspicious of anything I said.
On the other hand he knew he was a genius, while I was little more than a talking animal. I’d already played on that. Giving him what he expected shouldn’t be hard.
I winced. I wasn’t good at that kind of thing.
“Better learn quick, then,” said my friend who wasn’t there.
16
KROUN
GABRIEL blundered his way clear of the alley before the nightclub’s muscle turned up to deal with the noise. He ducked behind a parked car for cover and kept going until his legs decided they’d had enough. He ended up sitting on a curb, holding his head, in too much pain to even groan.
It was almost as bad as his first waking. The main improvement was that he wasn’t covered with earth, blood, and Ramsey’s body.
Broder must have used a blackjack, not that his fist would have caused less damage. He’d hit the perfect spot on the left-hand side.
Gabe found a patch of mostly clean snow, balled some up, and pressed it to his skull. That helped, but he felt sick throughout his body, not just his head. He wanted to hole up somewhere and, if not die, then sweat through this agony undisturbed until he healed.
After the snowball melted to nothing, he was able to stand without wobbling too much.
The next street over had a few other night owls prowling about, but no cabs in sight. He dug out another ten-dollar bill, stood under a streetlight, and held it up at passing cars. As it represented over a week’s wage for the lucky ones with jobs, it didn’t take long for someone to pull over. The risk for this kind of hitchhiking was being found by a mug looking to take the rest of the money. Gabe was in no mood for games.
The man at the wheel checked him over. “You inna fight?”
Perceptive of him. “Yeah, can you get me out of here? My wife’s on the warpath and—”
“Hop in!”
The driver was cheerfully drunk, in a let’s be pals mood, and happy to commiserate about matrimonial tribulations. Gabe turned down an offer to share booze from a pocket flask and talked him into driving clear of the Loop, all the way to Fleming’s house.
“Sure about this?” asked the man when they got there. “Won’t she be waitin’ for you?”
“Home’s the last place she’ll look,” he assured his bleary Samaritan, who thought that to be extremely funny. He drove off laughing, ten bucks richer.
Gabe had trouble with the picklocks. He couldn’t get his fingers to work together. It took nearly a minute to break in. He was well aware that he wasn’t thinking too clearly, but willing to risk that Mike wouldn’t come nosing around. He had a pounding to recover from himself, and Broder might still think his assault had been fatal.
As for Escott, well, he was supposed to be smart and good at his job, but his choice to follow them…
“Nuts. Everyone in this town is goddamned nuts,” Gabe muttered to the empty house as he trudged upstairs in the dark.
He made his way by the faint glow coming in around the window curtains. It was brighter than before, too early for dawn, he thought, until checking his new watch. Damn. How long had he been sitting on that curb? It had seemed only minutes. Maybe he’d blacked out. He’d lost time after the car crash. Wouldn’t that just be the pip if Fleming turned out to be right?
Gabe dug his earth-crusted clothes from the bottom of the wardrobe, grabbed blankets from the bed, and went hunting for the attic.
Behind a hall door he found a narrow stairs that ended in a ceiling trap, which at first seemed to be locked, though there was no mechanism, just a handle. He gave a hard push and the door lifted when something heavy fell away on the other side.
Somehow a trunk had been left on top of the trap. How the hell…?
Oh. Fleming’s disappearing trick. He’d pushed the trunk on the door, then slipped down past it. He probably used the attic for refuge, and this was how he locked himself in.
