The place was dark and corrupt with the stink of decay. Brasher was an old vampire from the time before electric freezers. He slept in only a coffin and the whole place smelled of rot as a result.
Looking around, I found myself standing in a large empty pantry off a large kitchen. The kitchen didn’t look like it got used much, but then why would it? Brasher always ordered out.
I shut the door behind me and listened hard. I got an earful of nothing for my trouble. Fighting the urge to check the load again, I moved into a long wooden hall that led past a formal dining room and stopped at a narrow staircase. I listened again. Still nothing. I thought back on the floor plan Coraline had insisted I memorize. The study was at the far back of the house on the second floor. The stairs would take me there. I started up.
The unmistakable scent of fresh blood assaulted me as I stepped into the upstairs hall. Coraline had fed me well before I left, but the overpowering scent stirred the need to change and feed deep within me. I felt it coil in my gut and press for release. So far, since being turned, I had managed to avoid a full metamorphosis into my vampire state. I had come close a couple of times while feeding, but had always managed to hold back. I was a little scared of it. More than a little, if you want to know the truth. I told myself that what I feared was the idea of giving up control and turning into some kind of mindless killing machine, but honestly I was more scared of how much I secretly wanted to let go, how much some new and horrible part of me wanted me to do exactly that.
I swallowed hard and shook my head to clear it. It worked, but only a little. I knew this was just the beginning. The longer I was exposed to the smell, the worse the need would grow and the more whatever it was inside me that wanted out would begin to rage against its restraints. It made me think of a shackled madman screaming for release from his padded cell. I had to keep my head about me. I needed to be able to think if I was going to succeed against a vampire as powerful as Brasher.
Time to do this.
Less cautious than before, I followed my gun barrel along the uneven wooden floors of the hall. With every step the smell of blood grew stronger, and with it, my desire to change.
The hall hooked right and so did I. Just ahead, light escaped from a thin crack at the base of a sturdy oak door. I moved to it. The intense smell of blood here told me that there was a fresh corpse somewhere behind it. If things were going as anticipated, Brasher would be there too, passed out unconscious over his last supper.
I took a deep breath and shook my head again like a driver fighting to stay awake at the wheel. Then I cocked the gun and turned the knob and stepped through.
The room was an abattoir. Rivulets of wet blood ran down the walls and puddled on the floor. Furniture and lamps had been overturned as if a life-and-death struggle had taken place. It had. On the hearth near the large fireplace lay the eviscerated body of a kid of no more than fifteen or sixteen. It was all just about as expected. There was only one thing missing from the scenario. Brasher.
I knew I should get out. I needed some time to recoup and come up with a plan B for finding and killing Brasher, but the lure of all that blood was irresistible. Maybe I could just have a taste. What would it hurt? The kid was already dead. Whatever use he might once have had for that sweet red nectar no longer applied. I’d just have myself a little taste. Not enough to make me sleepy. Just a nip. Then I’d get back to business.
Unable to help myself, I went over and knelt down by the body. Quaking with desire, I set the gun down, bent and touched my lips to the blood-slick neck. It wasn’t until I heard the racking cough above me that I realized it had all been a trap. Of course it had. What vampire worth his salt would waste good blood spreading it around on the walls? He wouldn’t, unless he was trying to lure another vampire to him by doing it.
Stupid.
Too late, I looked up to see Brasher, in full vampire form, upside down and clinging like a white spider to a light fixture on the high vaulted ceiling. Too late, I reached for the gun. Too goddamn late.
Brasher dropped down on me with an ugly snarl. His full weight caught me mid-back and slammed me down hard atop the dead kid. I grunted as one of my ribs broke with a garden-fresh snap. It hurt, don’t think it didn’t. For a moment I was pinned, helpless as a butterfly on a mat board, but then the pressure lifted and I lunged for the gun. My fingers fumbled for it, closed on it. Desperate, I rolled over to fire, but Brasher’s clawed fist caught me on the jaw and drove me down on my back this time. Before I could react, his foot lashed out and kicked the gun from my hand, sending it clattering out of reach across the polished wood floor. Coraline was right; despite his age, he was unbelievably fast and strong. This was what it was to be a killing machine. I was in trouble and I knew it.
I tried to scramble back, but found myself stopped cold as a tree-root hand clamped down vice-tight on my windpipe. Brasher stuck his hideously malformed face—all bone and menace—in mine and lifted me until my patent leather shoe soles hovered a half-inch off the floor. It’s a pretty good trick, unless you happen to be on the receiving end of it. He held me there, his blood-engorged eyes studying me like a lab specimen of considerable interest.
“So you’re the one she’s been slipping away to see,” he said, his words sloppy and ill-formed as they fled through gaps in that awful mouth full of teeth. His breath smelled of blood and decay. “You don’t look like much. I wonder what she sees in you.”
“Guess you haven’t seen your reflection lately,” I managed through the choking.
It made him angry and he threw me across the room. I hit the far wall and bounced back like a pro-wrestler off the ropes, then collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Head spinning, ears ringing, my vision gray at the edges, I curled up and waited for a final charge that didn’t come. When I finally looked up, I saw Brasher in the final moments of transformation back into human form. As ugly a vampire as he made, he made an even uglier person. He looked like something dug up from a grave. Worse, he looked wrong, like a perversion of nature, far too old to still be walking and talking and sucking air.
“My apologies. I’m afraid I let my temper get the best of me,” he wheezed. “Let’s don’t fight. At least until we ascertain precisely why we are fighting.”
“Suits me,” I said, glad for any reprieve in the beating.
Brasher started to say something else, but decided on a hacking fit of coughing instead. It wasn’t pretty. With his looks, nothing he did would ever be pretty again. I averted my eyes, more for me than for him, and waited for it to end. When it finally did, he took a stained handkerchief from the pocket of his red-satin smoking jacket and dabbed it over his bloody lips.
“I think I may have overtaxed myself playing with you as I did,” he said with a chuckle. Then, sucking for air like an old accordion, he stumbled over to one of the few chairs in the room that remained unbroken and upright and sank into it. “If you live to be my age you’ll find that there’s a hefty toll for everything you do.”
I didn’t know if he meant it in earnest or as a threat, but being as he had gone back to coughing, I decided to let it go.
This time, when he was done he said, “You came to kill me.” It was a statement, not a question.
“How did you know?”
He nodded, smiled bitterly. “I’ve known for a while now. She tried her best to hide it, but, well I’m afraid it slipped out. Our little Coraline is quite a girl, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “She’s quite a girl.” It seemed to say it all. Suddenly we were just two Joes in love with the same dame.
“I suppose I should have anticipated something like this. Of course it would end like this. Of course it would. I—it’s just—she was so lovely I couldn’t help myself.” He looked at me as if to ask if I understood.
I nodded. I understood all too well.
“I suppose the saying ‘There is no greater fool than an old fool’ is true. It was stupid, but I allowed myself to believe she truly car
ed for me.”
“Maybe that’s what you get for turning a girl young enough to be your long-lost descendent.”
Brasher nodded. “You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t have done it. I knew that, but I just wanted to experience the love of a woman one more time before—” He cut himself off with a shake of the head. “And then she was so insistent.”
He must have seen something in my expression because he styled his mug into something resembling a smile. “That surprises you.” A statement, not a question.
“You’re saying she asked you to turn her into a vampire?”
“Demanded, to be precise. I don’t know how she found out about me exactly, but there are a select few mortals who know what I am. It’s unavoidable. In any case, she turned up here late one night. Waltzed right up to my front gate and told me over the speaker box that she had a proposition for me and wanted to be let in. I was intrigued. I let her in.”
Brasher went through a pint-size version of the coughing and wiping routine before going on. I waited for him to finish before asking, “So what was it?”
“She told me I either had to make her into what I was, or else she was going straight to the police and make trouble for me with a story that I had tried to rape and kill her.” He smiled like a proud poppa. “Can you imagine? Trying to blackmail me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I told her there was one alternative she had overlooked. That if I wished I could simply kill her where she stood.”
“And?”
“And that’s when she showed me the gun. That very one right there I believe.” He gestured behind me to where the pistol had come to a stop against a table leg. “She showed it to me and said she had a silver bullet for every step I took toward her. Brave little minx. Well, how could I resist a proposition like that?”
“So you turned her.”
“I did.”
“Funny, that’s not the version I heard.”
“Did you hear it, or did you see it?”
The expression on my face answered for me. Brasher nodded. “I thought so. You saw what she wanted you to see, nothing more.”
“Nice try,” I said.
“You think I’m prevaricating?”
“If that’s a fancy way of saying I think you’re full of horseshit, yeah, that’s exactly what I think.”
Brasher smiled. “Perhaps I’m not the biggest fool here. At least I know when I’ve been duped.”
“That what you think? She duped me into this?”
“Of course. She needed you to kill me because she couldn’t do it herself, so she convinced you that I’m a monster that needs to be put down. Simple as that.”
“You’re wrong.”
Brasher only smiled at me.
“Why tell me all this? Why not just kill me?”
“My dear boy, why in the world would I do that? You’re just a pawn in this game. Killing you would accomplish nothing, but turning you against your own queen, now that—that would be a feat.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“Simply by telling you the truth.”
“Yeah? Okay, so what’s the truth?”
“She’s going to turn on you. She’s already planning on it.”
“Don’t you say that. Don’t you goddamn say that. You don’t know a thing about me and her.”
Brasher took a swipe at his lips and said, “Oh, but I do. When I realized she was slipping away to see someone else I couldn’t resist. I took a peek into her mind. She plans on doing away with you too.”
The pitying way he shook his head at me made me sore—real sore, if you want to know the truth. Forgetting myself, I reached out and grabbed him up by his lapels from the chair and shook him violently. “You’re lying!”
“You wouldn’t be so angry if you believed that.”
“Take it back. Take it back or I’ll kill you.”
I slammed him hard against the wall, setting off a whole new fit of coughing. Thinking it would be impolite to interrupt, I just stood there waiting for him to die or recover. He recovered. When he did he said, “I accept.”
“Come again?” I said, letting him go in my surprise.
Free, Brasher moved back to the chair and sat again. “I accept your proposition. You came to kill me and I’m going to let you.”
“And why the hell would you do that?”
“You’re too young to understand, but when you get to a certain point you know your time is done. Your best years are behind you; long behind in my case. Vampires live a long time, but even we don’t live forever. That’s what they don’t tell you—that however slowly it happens, you continue to decay. I’m rotting. Falling apart from the inside out. Coraline was the only thing I’ve had worth living for in a month of years, and now I find I don’t even have that. One final lesson well learnt. It’s time.”
Looking at him sitting there, slumped and broken, I knew he was right. He was a cautionary tale. He had lived far too long. I would be doing him a favor by killing him.
“How do you want it?” I asked.
“One has too few unexpected moments at my age,” he said. “Why don’t you surprise me.”
The hazel-wood stake Coraline had given me remained jammed down in my belt. I took it out now and walked over to him and placed the tip against the satin cloth of his jacket, just over his heart.
“If I may give you one last avuncular word of advice,” he said. “When you’ve done what you’re going to do, I recommend that you drink some of my blood.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For your own good. I made Coraline. She made you. With my blood in your veins she won’t be able to look into your mind as I’ve done with her. The playing field will be level.”
“Why are you so interested in helping me?”
“The way I see it, you and I are the victims here. When you realize I’m right about her, you’ll kill her. But only if she doesn’t see it coming and kill you first.”
“You’re wrong about her, old man,” I said.
Brasher laughed patronizingly and I jammed the stake through his salmon-bone brittle breastplate and deep into his heart as much to cut the sound of it short as anything else. It must have hurt, but only a soft gasp escaped him as his jaundiced, seen-everything eyes grew wide and he folded like a collapsed tent to the floor.
Unblinking, those awful eyes watched me as I moved in and bit at his neck and drank. They watched me as I lifted him into my arms and carried him to the fireplace and folded him in like a marionette into its case. They watched me as I doused him with kerosene and scratched a match to life. Even as his clothes ignited and his flesh blackened and ran—
They watched me.
18
The pounding on the door signals the transition from one nightmare to another. I get up. I tell the pounder to hold his horses. I dress. When I finally answer I find two homicide detectives standing at my door. One I don’t recognize. The other I do.
“Detective Coombs,” I say, forcing a smile. Dumb luck. All the homicide detectives crawling around this city and I get Coombs twice in the same week.
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
“Your message,” I say, hoping there was one.
“Oh right. Right. You uh—” He checks his notes. “You Michael Angel?”
I nod and give him my firmest good-guy handshake.
“Hey, wow. Your hands are cold.”
“Bad circulation,” I say, not bothering to mention it’s because I’ve spent the last twelve hours in a deep freeze.
Coombs nods and a look of puzzlement crosses his doughy face. “Have we met?”
“Oh I think I’d remember that,” I say.
Coombs doing what he does and me doing what I do, I guess it’s only natural we’d bump into each other from time to time, but the fact that this visit follows so closely on the heels of our last makes me uneasy. Real uneasy, if you want to know the truth.
“Hey, where are my manners
? This is my partner, Detective Elliot,” Coombs says.
I shake Elliot’s hand and study him while he does the same to me. He’s younger and thinner than Coombs with a snarl of curly brown hair that could still be weeded of its gray. What his face lacks in chin it tries to make up for in nose. The overall effect makes his head look top-heavy. Taken together they couldn’t be more different. The only things they have in common are the cheap suits and the bacon-smelling aftershave.
“Mind if we come in?”
“Actually, I’m kind of in a hurry. I have an appointment.”
“It won’t take long,” Elliot says, speaking for the first time. His voice is nasal and a little whiny and I imagine it’s the reason he leaves most of the talking to Coombs.
It all sounds polite and friendly, but I can tell I don’t really have a choice here, so I let them in. I figure this visit has to do with either Dallas or Vin Prince. Problem is I don’t know which and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to ask.
Coombs and I sit at my desk just like before. I apologize to Elliot for not having an extra chair.
“That’s all right. I like to stand. Like to move around,” he says. As if to prove the point he walks over and picks the photograph of me and my old band mates up off my desk and looks at it.
“This you?”
I shake my head. “My grandpa.”
“Looks just like you.”
“That’s what Grandma always said,” I say with a thin smile. “So, uh, what’s all this about?”
“You in a hurry?” Coombs asks now.
“I think I said I was.”
“Oh that’s right, you did say that. You’re going somewhere, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, as Elliot circles behind me like a shark to inspect the aluminum foil covered window.
“Big date?”
“Something like that,” I say.
“What’s the deal with this?” Elliot asks now, aiming one narrow finger at my window. This must be how they do it. Keep the questions coming hard and fast and keep the suspect off balance. Got to give it to them—it worked.
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