At the moment the sword began its downward arc, an ominous, snarling growl echoed through the dank basement. The Katana wielding vampire lost his head as Maggie bit through his spinal cord. The katana clattered to the cement floor in a cloud of vampire dust. Maggie and Dylan then tore into the remaining two minions without remorse. When the vampires were dispatched, save the Dark One, the two wolves stood panting. Antony was down with a gaping wound in his back. David, as well, had been waylaid. Maggie’s wolf padded over to Randal to protect him.
The auburn-haired wolf paced in front of the Dark One. The vampire did not seem afraid. He stood motionless as the werewolf moved back and forth in front of him.
Abruptly, the wolf leapt into the air with a snarl, its teeth in line to rip out the Dark One’s throat. But the wolf stopped in midair as the dark one reached out.
And punched a hole into the auburn wolf’s chest. When he withdrew his hand, Dylan’s heart was throbbing in the vampire’s fist. Dylan dropped to the floor on his back. Within seconds, the wolf had transformed into a mere man. A hole, raw and glistening with blood, had been opened in Dylan’s chest. His head listed to the left and his dead eyes stared at the wall.
Stunned, David retrieved his katana and staggered to his feet. Behind David the black wolf howled, and tears spilled from the human eyes.
The Dark One, fearing an attack from the remaining wolf, moved away from her. He kept the vampire with the sword at a distance as well; he knew when to retreat and that time was now. He walked backwards toward the stairs not taking his eyes off the group. He smiled at David and gave a salute, then started up the stairs. The fleeing vampire could not use his speed in reverse, but as long as he could keep his enemies in front of him, nothing could surprise him. If the other vampire moved with the deadly speed, he would see it coming and defend himself against the assault. Once on the ground floor, he would move faster than any of them could comprehend. He sensed the open doorway approaching from behind. So far the blonde vampire and the wolf had not pressed an attack. What were they waiting for? Did they fear having their hearts ripped out as well? The Dark One felt his foot touch the top of the stairway...at last.
As he stepped through the doorway at the top of the stairs, a thick and rusty blade burst through his chest. The shocked vampire looked down at the protruding appendage that had seemingly sprouted from nowhere in the center of his chest then it disappeared again. Startled and confused, he managed to turn around in jerky movements, as if he had no understanding of how his body worked anymore. Once he had managed to turn around, comprehension hit him. He stared at his precious Corpse Boy holding the machete.
The corpse boy spoke his first three words. The words were slurred and issued forth from rotting vocal cords.
In a garbled, tortured—but distinct—voice, the boy said, “Goodbye, Dark Father.”
Then he pushed the stunned vampire down the stairs.
As the Dark One stumbled back, David stepped forward and swiped his katana, severing the vampire’s head from his neck. The head flew against the side wall and burst into ash. The headless body continued sliding down the stairs past David to rest at the bottom in a dried and shriveled husk. The remains would continue to dissolve until there was nothing left to prove the vampire had ever existed. David stepped over the remains.
He stared up in stunned silence at the decaying boy standing in the doorway. David had no words as he watched the expressionless face, stretched taut with mummified flesh, contort into a grimace. David realized suddenly that the creature was actually smiling. The corner of David’s mouth turned up slightly, and he waved at the corpse boy standing at the top of the stairs. The moment passed, however; and the boy turned and disappeared into the rooms above. David continued to stare for a moment, shocked and confused. When the moment had passed he headed back to the basement where Maggie’s black wolf was standing over Dylan’s corpse. Randal brushed a hand across her fur, consoling her. Antony had already begun to heal and was leaning against the wall near the others. David walked over to him and helped him to the stairs.
In another section of the basement, to the left of the stairs, David saw with slight interest the collection of broken coffins. David, being a modern vampire who slept in a bed, found this ritual to be archaic and pointless. He turned to Randal. “Did you do that?” Randal nodded in the affirmative. David ruffled the boy’s hair, and then carried Dylan’s body up the stairs and out of the mansion. He buried the body under the massive oak tree in the back yard.
Maggie and Dylan had driven to the mountain resort. It was why they had arrived so late. They had kept their clothes in the car before turning into wolves. Now Maggie transformed into her human form, dressed, and made a marker out of wood to put on Dylan’s grave. She stayed by the grave after the others had gone. She stayed by the grave for days.
33.
The woman came awake with a start. Her eyes were open but unseeing. Was she blind? No, she realized with some relief. She was just in the dark. She had no idea where she was. It was too dark to see but she could feel. There was a sheet covering her naked form. She was hungry, so hungry. She reached out and her hand hit the cold steel that was only a few inches away from her face. She pushed out at the steel over her head, felt it give under her powerful strength. She pushed until the bolts broke and the small door popped open. She pulled herself toward the opening and the drawer on which she lay slid out of the hole she was in and into the empty room. She climbed out of the drawer and realized she was in the morgue. She was having trouble piecing together the events of her last few hours. She remembered jogging in the park, getting ready to head home, and then the strange boy asked her if she was his mother. After that she could remember nothing. She pulled the tag off her toe and looked at her name: Sandra Pollack.
She pushed through the swinging doors and searched until she found a laundry basket with some clean hospital gowns. She slipped into one and continued down the hallway. In one room she found a tray with utensils spread out on a quilted blue cloth. This was an operating room. She picked up one of the utensils from the tray and held it protectively at her chest. She left the operating room and continued down the hallway. Florescent lights flickered overhead, confusing her, frightening her.
At a hallway intersection, the woman bumped into a maintenance worker. He apologized for his clumsiness.
“Should you be down here?” he asked grabbing her arm and intending to lead her to the elevators.
The woman lashed out with the scalpel in her hand and opened a two-inch gash in his neck, at the carotid. She covered the wound with her mouth and sucked. During her escape from the hospital, the woman came across two more hospital workers that met with similar fates. She left the hospital and pushed through the night in a blur of movement and crackling thunder.
She returned home where she lived alone.
She headed into the basement and began blocking out the windows. She needed a nest out of the sun.
She wondered what happened to that boy from the park. She decided she would look for him. Whatever had happened to her—whatever she was—it started with him. He would have the answers to her questions. How hard could it be, after all, to find a boy with fangs, who liked to attack people for no reason, and who would be the same age for the rest of his unnaturally long life.
Yes, she would find this boy and thank him.
Personally.
34.
The blind woman watched as her dark companion finished his meal. When the vampire had drained all the blood from the prey, she used the knife at her side to decapitate the corpse. The body was then taken to a preferred dump site where it might never be found.
But then again, perhaps it would. It didn’t matter to the pair. They took precautions, but they didn’t live by any rules or standards. If the body was found, there would be no way to track it back to them; and even if it was traced to them, they were not afraid of man’s laws or his retaliations.
The woman and the vampire returned t
o the house on Lansdowne Drive. They watched from the darkness as the figures inside the house moved back and forth past the windows. There was a party. The vampire known as Antony and the child vampire were celebrating the graduation of the human offspring of the werewolf woman and the vampire known as David.
The man beside the blind woman grinded his vampiric teeth. She had warned him against that—she couldn’t guarantee they would grow back if he ground them down to nubs.
“They have no right to be happy,” he said. “Listen to them laughing and carrying on. I could go in there right now and wipe them all out.”
“Their time will come. As I’ve said before, we will know when the time is right to strike. And when that time comes we will crush them. You will finally have your vengeance.”
The vampire stopped grinding his teeth and opened his mouth wide to relieve the tension in his jaw.
“That time cannot come soon enough. Antony will pay for his past regressions, and I will have my day of vindication.”
“Yes,” the blind woman said. “That time will come sooner than you expect.”
The cloaked vampire’s shadowed face glared hatefully at the forms moving through the house. His vampire ears could pick up bits and pieces of their conversations, but he didn’t care about anything they had to say. After a moment, the calmness of the woman standing next to him caused him to become still as well. He trusted what she had to say. He accepted her words.
She turned to him.
“A war is coming,” she said and placed a hand on his arm. “Two sides. Yours and his. He will be making new friends, and new enemies, because even as his numbers will grow, so will yours. And when the time comes, you will get your revenge.”
The hooded figure nodded slowly, and they walked away from the house, leaving those inside consigned to their fate.
Epilogue: Gardner
They all lived in the Victorian mansion together, although there had been some major changes over the years. For starters, there was a distinctively feminine touch to the house. The bland unadorned walls were now covered in family portraits and artwork. The living room had larger windows which allowed in more sunlight during the day, and more moon and starlight at night. The windows were covered in light, airy drapes which matched the furniture. Through the previous eighteen years the house had been adorned with the artwork and awards Gardner brought home from school. This year was Gardner’s senior year.
Earlier that night, David watched his son receive his diploma and turned to Maggie at his right and smiled. She was crying. He hugged her. The night graduation ceremony ended and the group headed home. Gardner chatted quietly with Randal and Antony in the back seat. David could catch certain words spoken: College, tuition, major. Gardner was talking about his future. It was a future where he would grow up, marry; and he may even get a job, even though he would never want for money. He would grow up, grow old, and die.
…But not if David could help it.
When the others were all ensconced in their own business, David led Gardner to the back of the house, past the stairs leading up to their bedrooms and the stairs leading down to the panic room. He led him down the hall to the den, past the bathroom, under the pretense that he had something important to tell him in private.
“Yea, Dad?” Gardner asked. He was young, handsome and charismatic. It was the perfect time to turn him immortal, David thought.
“I’m very proud of you,” David said.
“Thanks, Dad,” Gardner said and they hugged.
He wasn’t sure if he should give Gardner the option to become immortal, or choose the option for him. He couldn’t sit back and watch his son grow old. Soon Gardner would look older than him. This just wasn’t right. His son would grow old and die; and David couldn’t sit back and watch that happen. It was a gruesome death, what David proposed for his son, but a glorious future.
But could David really do this? He planned on draining his son and killing him. He had debated this over the years, and he always came out with the same result. No matter the cost, he couldn’t let Gardner grow old. How could a fifty-year-old Gardner introduce a twenty something as his father? It was already hard enough convincing people that David was old enough to be Gardner’s father, and he was too proud of his son to ever have to lie about their relationship to each other.
But now the time had come and David wasn’t sure he could go through with it. His mind was spinning at the thought that this could destroy Gardner’s trust in him.
David gripped Gardner by his shoulders and held the boy out at arm’s length. He looked deeply into Gardner’s eyes. Finally, he said, “Have you ever wondered why Uncle Antony, Uncle Randal and I sleep all day and only come out at night? Have you wondered why we three, and your mother as well, seem to be no older than when you were young? Or why your mother seems to know things before they happen?”
“Well,” Gardner began. “You always told me Uncle Randal had a growth defect that made him look like a child even though he was really a grown man; and you explained mom has uncanny abilities.”
David squeezed his son’s strong arms, still holding him out at a distance. “That may not have been the complete truth,” David said. He did not continue. Gardner waited. He watched as his father’s eyes turned red. Were they really red or was it a trick of the light? David pulled his son in to an embrace.
David’s head moved inches from Gardner’s jugular. The time had come. His son was eighteen, young and handsome. If he waited much longer, Gardner would begin to grow old. He couldn’t bear to see his son whither into an old man and die. Gardner’s skin twitched where David’s fangs touched it.
The hug lasted a couple minutes longer then ended. The moment passed. David couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill his son no matter the reason. He smiled and held Gardner out at arm’s length once again. David’s red eyes had returned to a normal blue-green, and there were tears in them. Gardner wiped them away.
“You will do well in college. I have every confidence in you.” David kissed his son on the cheek and walked away.
Gardner stood there for a moment longer, confused. He was sure his father had been about to tell him something, some mysterious family secret. What had it been? Gardner sighed, and turned back to the living room and the rest of the graduation party.
When it happened, Gardner barely even registered the event.
Gardner walked down the hall, and as he passed one of the spare bedrooms, a black blur bolted out of the darkness. The mysterious animal bit him on the forearm, and then shot away with preternatural speed. He barely had time to gasp.
He thought he knew the wolf, had seen it before when he was younger. Was it a family pet? There were a lot of oddities surrounding his family such as why Uncle Randal still looked like a boy after all these years. And what was up with that wolf?
It didn’t matter. The bite wasn’t bad, just a nip really. The skin was broken but a single bandage would cover the wound. Instead of returning to the group, Gardner headed to the bathroom and rinsed the cut. He wasn’t sure but it looked like it was already starting to heal. The strangeness didn’t end there.
Gardner, your father couldn’t do what he wanted to do because it would mean your death. What I have done is much less…fatal. The voice Gardner heard inside his head belonged to his mother. He looked out the doorway into the hall, but no one was standing there.
“Mom?” he asked aloud. “What’s going on?”
Something wonderful. His mother’s response did not pass through his ears; but instead, seemed to echo inside his head. His mother wasn’t talking to him. He was hearing her thoughts. He was confused at first, but then began to understand a little. This was not a new ability to him. He had known he could read thoughts of others from a very young age. But the ability had been hard to use, and harder to control. But now something that his mother had done caused the ability to open up in him, blossom; like a flower whose petals had been closed, now spread wide. He could hear the thoughts with perfect
clarity.
Gardner thought: Am I going to learn all the family secrets now?
His mother did not respond.
“Mom, where are you?” he said aloud.
Gardner looked back toward the bathroom door and this time there was something there. The black wolf was standing in the doorway looking at him. Gardner saw his mother’s eyes looking at him from the wolf.
Inside his mind Gardner heard his mother say: We have a dangerous mission ahead of us, and I had to give you my gift so you could protect yourself from what lies ahead. I hope you can forgive me for what I have done.
What is this task? Gardner thought, but he received no answer.
Gardner concluded he was hearing his mother’s thoughts but she was not hearing his.
Please forgive me, my baby. I have passed on my gift to you. Sometimes it will not seem so gift-like, but it is. It really is.
I have already forgiven you, Gardner thought but knew it was not being conveyed. What you don’t realize is you’ve given me much more. Your gift has unleashed another power inside of me. Something I always suspected was there but didn’t know how to use it. Now, whatever you did—whatever your gift is—it has unleashed my other power.
Moments later, his father moved to stand behind the wolf. Then Uncle Rand and Uncle Antony joined them. They were all looking at him. As he stood looking into the crowd of family members, he listened to their thoughts. Words and phrases and images all tumbled out of them and into his head. He could read their minds, but they could not read his.
Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) Page 24