Companions of the Night

by Vivian Vande Velde

  If the idea of drinking someone's blood did awful things to her stomach, apparently the suggestions she was making were doing the same things to his.

  He pulled off the side of the road. Alarmed, Kerry backed up against the door, but he put his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. "I only want to explain," he said. "It's important you understand." He paused as though trying to organize his thoughts. Obviously this was something vampires didn't need to discuss between themselves, and just as obviously it wasn't something they normally shared with humans. Ethan was speaking hesitantly, having a hard time putting this into words. "It's not just the nourishment from the blood itself. There's..." He ran his hands through his hair, a nervous gesture she hadn't seen from him before. As though he realized what he was doing and wanted to hide this sign of strain, he rested his elbows on the steering wheel, not looking directly at her anymore, except to steal quick glances. He had his hands together, the fingers steepled, which almost looked like praying. Perhaps he had the same thought, for he shifted position, clasping his fingers together. "There's a physical and mental bond, a sharing of ... the spirit, for lack of a better word...."

  Kerry took in a deep breath. "I think I've heard this line from the boy who took me to the harvest dance."

  Ethan laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement, which was disconcerting because she hadn't meant to be funny. "There is a similarity." He looked at her appraisingly, as though trying to gauge how experienced she was.

  She folded her arms in front of her chest, determined to keep him wondering, before she realized that her gesture had probably told all.

  Ethan said, "Sometimes, not always—but with the right partner—vampires mix the two acts: sex and the drinking of blood Either of itself is ... very pleasurable, but the combination..."

  Parked on the side of a dark road, Kerry didn't like the direction this was taking, even though Ethan was showing no inclination to demonstrate. She said, "I'm sure praying mantises and black widow spiders feel the same."

  "Difficult to say." Ethan was close to laughing again, this time at her, she was sure. "But it is pleasurable for both parties." He shrugged. "Or it can be. As with humans, there are always those who take their enjoyment from violence."

  "You're saying it's pleasurable because you're a vampire," Kerry said "If another vampire drinks your blood, you don't die. I think that makes a pretty significant difference."

  For some reason that startled him. Then he said, "Kerry, a vampire doesn't kill every time he feeds."

  She had no idea whether to believe that.

  "A vampire needs to take ... a little bit more than your Red Cross does during a blood donation, not much more than a pint. It leaves the human slightly lightheaded, a bit weak. But exhilarated. Even without the sex."

  Kerry was skeptical.

  "How many vampires do you think there are?" he asked.

  That seemed a trap. "I have no idea."

  "Good answer." Again the light laugh, which might or might not have been sincere. "But consider: one vampire, one unexplained death per night, how long would it take for people to get suspicious?"

  He had a point. She said, "Are you trying to tell me you've never killed anyone?"

  "Would you believe that?" he asked, his eyes wide with innocence.

  She was tempted, but..."No," she said.

  "Good." He laughed. "I'm glad you're not that gullible."

  "So why do you kill if it isn't necessary?"

  "Ah, but it is necessary periodically. Without taking blood, the vampire becomes unable to think of anything besides his all-consuming need, which just grows and grows until eventually he loses what you humans would so arrogantly term 'his humanity.' He becomes like a beast, tearing unthinkingly into the first available victim, and doesn't even recognize until too late if that victim should be his own parent or child or lover. He'll feel devastated, afterward, with their blood coursing through his veins. However, even with a steady diet of blood, too long between kills and the vampire becomes mentally and physically sluggish. He gets weaker and weaker, unable to move, unable to rise out of bed, until finally he's unable even to take the few breaths a vampire needs to survive. It's more than the nourishment, it's the draining of the life force. Feeling the echo of another person's thoughts and memories, which is just as life-sustaining to us as the blood itself And besides..."

  She pressed, because he was in a much more open mood than usual. "Besides...?"

  "You won't like it." He put the car into drive and pulled back onto the road. "Killing is very pleasurable."

  Consider yourself fairly warned, Kerry thought. "So what does all this have to do with Regina?"

  "Nothing," Ethan said "You're the one who brought up vampires' feeding habits."

  "You're making me crazy, do you know that?" Kerry said. She could never get the upper hand with him, not even for a minute. She forced the frustration out of her voice, determined not to give him the satisfaction. "So you're saying that another vampire could have killed her, a blood-starved vampire—or just a slightly perverted one—who drained her, then cut off her head to make it look like vampire hunters?"

  "No."

  "A vampire wouldn't do that?" Kerry asked, between sarcasm and bitterness.

  Ethan said, "It was the sun that killed her before the decapitation."

  "How can you tell?"

  "By how little blood was on the sheets, and the way they were all mussed, as though she struggled. A vampire's sleep is ... very deep No restless tossing and turning as in humans' sleep. Sunlight is all that could have wakened her prematurely."

  "Not even..." It was hard to say out loud. "Not even getting her head cut off?" Kerry asked incredulously.

  "There have been such cases," Ethan told her, "and there were no signs of struggle."

  He should know. Unless, of course, he was lying. For all she knew, vampires weren't nearly as sensitive to sunlight as he indicated. For all she knew, he could have donned sunglasses and opened the shutters himself. She tried to work it out, with him killing Regina and trying to use her as an alibi when the other vampires came looking, but that seemed needlessly complicated even by vampire standards.

  She said, "I assumed you spent the night with her. You know."

  He gave her another of those incredulous I-can't-believe-I-heard-you-say-that looks. "Regina and me?"

  "I assumed," she repeated, feeling like an idiot.

  "No."

  Fine, she thought. But don't pull that Who?-Regina-and-me? routine on me, when you get all twitchy every time her name comes up. She said, "So these vampire hunters want me because...?"

  "Clearly, because you helped me escape and they assume you're one of us."

  "Clearly," Kerry repeated "And what are they likely to have done with my family?"

  "That's something else to figure out along the way." Ethan shook his head. "I've been trying to fit Leviticus seventeen-ten into it, and I'm not coming up with anything."

  "What?" Kerry asked.

  "The message on your wall." Another of those looks. "Beneath the part where they said they had your family."

  Kerry remembered there had been letters and numbers she hadn't been able to figure out.

  "It's the Biblical injunction against the taking of blood," Ethan explained "I certainly had it quoted to me enough when they captured me. 'If anyone partakes of any blood, I will set myself against that one and will cut him off from among my people.'"

  "The laundry owner," Kerry said. "He's always been real religious...." She saw the look Ethan was giving her and petered off. "You and Regina killed him that night, didn't you? And his wife, and Roth, and Sidowski."

  "Sister," Ethan corrected. "You left out Ken Kelada, the one I killed while they were in the process of capturing me. But apparently there was at least one more."

  Ken. She remembered the laundry owner on the phone, telling Marcia, "Ken's dead," and Sidowski's accusation: "He broke his neck, just like that." Ethan had denied it, back when it neve
r occurred to her to doubt him. She had thought she was getting used to the idea of violence, but five people dead so far, not counting Regina-—

  Ethan was watching her. "I told you you wouldn't like it," he said.

  Chapter Ten

  THEY TURNED OFF onto a road that was gravel for a while, then simply dirt.

  "Welcome to Bergen Swamp," Ethan said.

  "Looks like woods to me," Kerry said.

  Ethan grinned at her. "Ah, but that's until you step into it."

  Eventually, when the road was more rutted grass than dirt, he pulled over to the side.

  "What if there are hunters?" Kerry asked. They'd passed two other cars parked closer to the main road.

  "I'll be aware of them long before they see us," Ethan assured her.

  "Us?" That was an unpleasant surprise, and she didn't get out of the car as he opened the back door and flung Regina's remains over his shoulder. Surely he wasn't worried that she'd try to escape when they were miles from anywhere.

  "What if there are hunters?" He threw back her own question at her. "Do you want to be alone in the car, trying to explain what you're doing here?"

  "I could explain I'm waiting for my..." Kerry choked on boyfriend and substituted, "someone."

  "It might work." Ethan smiled at her. "With certain hunters."

  Kerry didn't like the line of thinking that started.

  "I'd advise you to stay very close," Ethan said. "Step where I step. Feel free to hold on to the back of my belt. There are patches of quicksand."

  She scrambled to get untangled from the seatbelt before he got too far ahead. "Wait!" she yelped. One step out of the car and already she was so deep into something that she nearly walked out of her shoe.

  Ethan turned around with a glare for all her noise. "Don't—"

  "Make a nuisance of myself," she whispered. "I know. I'm sorry. Please don't walk so fast. I can't see as well as you can."

  He gave her a chance to get back into her shoe, and when she was ready, she took hold of the hem of his jacket. She did her best to walk as quietly as he did, but even stepping into his footprints she made more noise than he did.

  "Are you sure you know where you're going?" she asked.

  "Trust me," he said. She was beginning to hate it when he said that. "I've lived in the area all my life. I know every inch of it."

  A lot of inches, she thought.

  They walked, it seemed, forever. Things scurried just out of sight—at least out of her sight. The underbrush near them crackled ceaselessly. Probably best not to ask, she thought, picturing snakes—which were admittedly unlikely in the middle of the night, with winter setting in—and rabid raccoons. And other vampires. Would Ethan protect her from other vampires? Could he?

  Finally, in a spot that looked just like every other, Ethan stopped. He set Regina's body on the ground, then stooped down. Not praying, Kerry thought—do vampires pray?—but studying the land, and the sky, and the land again.

  "Is this a good place?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Ethan snapped, testy again. He rested his face in his hand. "I've never done this kind of thing before." He pushed the hair away from his forehead, and she saw that his hand was shaking. He sighed. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

  Which was both a relief and a concern.

  "Never had to dispose of a dead vampire's body before?" she asked.

  "Never had a vampire I knew die," he corrected.

  Vampire life—with its secret computer messages, and its blue cars, and its absolute dread of the discovery that could doom all—had sounded, despite the potential for immortality, like a fragile, precarious existence. She was surprised he'd never experienced the death of one of his compatriots before.

  "Ethan..."

  He sighed, burying his face in his hands.

  "Ethan, how long have you been a vampire?"

  He shook his head. "Almost a year," he whispered.

  It was not what she expected. It was not at all what she expected. But it explained a lot.

  She crouched down beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. Through the leather jacket she could feel his hard muscles but not the coldness of his skin. "How did it happen?"

  "I don't want to talk about it." He stood abruptly and took a few steps, but there was no room in which to pace.

  With his arms folded and his shoulders hunched, he looked as young and vulnerable as he had that first night.

  Finally he said, "My brother and I were driving from the college to the city, to see the New Year's Eve fireworks downtown over the Genesee River. It was my first year away from home. I was a freshman Peter, a senior." He paused, as though unsure whether to continue.

  Whatever was coming next caused him to speak with his teeth on edge. "Out in the middle of nowhere we passed by this car stopped by the side of the road, the hood up, no flares or anything. It was a couple of kids: the girl looked about your age, the boy maybe seventeen, eighteen." Ethan momentarily closed his eyes. "Peter felt sorry for them. He stopped, circled around, pulled up alongside. The girl came to my window. Her eye makeup was all"—he gestured vaguely—"running. She looked like she'd been crying and she said they'd been stuck out there for hours and nobody would stop. So we said we'd take a look, and we got out of our car."

  Ethan turned his back to her to compose himself When he turned back, his voice quavered. "The boy had a gun. He shot Peter three times, and me twice." He shuddered, tightening his arms across his stomach, so Kerry was sure, though he didn't say it, that that was where he'd been shot. "They went through our pockets, took our wallets, and when Peter tried to get up, they shot him one more time, in the head, and drove off in our car. I managed to crawl to Peter's side ... but he was dead already. I was sure I was going to die, too. And then a car pulled up. I thought it was them again..." Once more his voice quavered. "But it was this beautiful lady. Regina. She came and sat down there on the side of the road. She put my head in her lap and stroked my hair, and she told me I was dying, which I knew already. And she told me that, if I wanted, she could stop the pain. And she said, if I wanted, she could help me live." He covered his face and finished the story speaking into his hands. "I was so frightened, I said I wanted to live."

  "How awful," Kerry said, hardly able to speak out loud "Oh, Ethan..." She shook her head, knowing that she could never get the words right to let him know how sorry she was. She thought again of everything he'd said and done since they first met, and she realigned it all to fit with this beginning.

  And yet...

  And yet...

  "But...," she said, "you've been a vampire at least long enough to change your identity once."

  He looked at her over his clasped hands.

  "You identified yourself as Michael for the other vampires."

  "Ah," he said equably, "there is that."

  She was no longer hesitant. "And when we were just getting out of the car, you said you'd lived in the area all your life, not that you came here for college."

  He shook his head, not looking at all contrite. "You do have me there," he admitted, walking back to Regina's body.

  "Damn you!" Kerry said.

  He just smiled.

  She was almost willing to try kicking him for making her feel so wretched.

  He waved her back. "I'm going to take her out of the wrappings," he warned.

  "I hate you," she said.

  "That'll probably work out for the best."

  It may well have been the most honest thing he'd said to her so far.

  Once more, as he stooped down before the body, she wondered if vampires prayed, or if it would be appropriate to pray for a vampire. But Ethan just tumbled the body out of the wrappings like someone unrolling an area rug to air it out, and Kerry grimaced, unable to look away before making out what she already knew, that there were two separate pieces. Immediately the body and head began to sink in the quicksand.

  "There's a creek a few minutes' walk this way " He pointed "We'll throw the pillo
w and the nightgown in there." It was the first she realized he must have undressed the corpse back at the house. "We'll drop off the rest of the bedding a little bit here and a little bit there."

  "You're so sentimental," she said. "You really need to get ahold of yourself."

  He caught her by the ponytail and yanked her back, spinning her to face him. "You don't know anything," he said.

  She remembered what it had felt like, in the computer room at Regina's house, when she had first realized he planned to kill her. She'd been foolish to think of him as anything else. If he lets you live, she told herself, focus on what you saw then. Think of him, always, that way. And not as the sometimes charming, sometimes infuriating companion who chatted to help pass the time, or the open and reasonable vampire who spoke frankly but with some embarrassment about his bloodlust, as though it were a controllable disease, or even the avenging angel who was her family's only hope of survival, and certainly not—especially not—what he'd fooled her with twice already, the poor little waif who only needed to be held and comforted. Whether those were pure fabrications or whether they were, in fact, facets of his personality, the only important one was the one she'd faced in the computer room, the one she faced now.

  She could see the glint of his teeth in the moonlight; she all but felt his gaze on her throat. She'd overstepped whatever bounds he'd set for her, and there was no use even trying to struggle.

  He bent over her arched neck.

  If she had a choice, if it was a matter of letting go or holding on, she was determined to die rather than become a vampire...

  She felt his lips on her throat.

  ...but where would that leave Dad and Ian?

  He kissed her, gently.

  "If you don't like vampire games," he said softly, "don't play."

  A moment later he released her, so suddenly she almost fell. He tossed her the pillow, the bloodiest of the items, and gathered up the rest, indicating, again, the direction of the creek.

  Chapter Eleven

  AT THE CREEK Ethan ripped open Regina's pillow, shaking out a cloud of down before tossing the empty pillowcase into the water.