by Adams, Nancy
And that girl! The youngest one, Cassandra, she was so odd. It was like she was some weird mix of old woman and little girl, and she seemed like she just wasn’t quite right in the head, y’know?
They closed off the house and sealed the scene with crime scene tape, then put two officers on duty to watch it overnight. The Forensics Team couldn’t get there until morning—Philly kept them busy most of the time—so two officers would draw overtime to sit in their car and drink coffee until the sun came back up the next day.
The vampire listened to be sure no one was inside, and then began slowly pushing off the coal. The sun was about to go down, and the rest of them would be waking any second now. He didn’t want to have to explain while they were still buried in the stuff.
The oldest woman woke first. “William, what...?”
He shushed her, and waited until the other three were breathing again, then explained what had happened.
“The cops think we’ve left, already,” he said, after telling them about the burglars he’d killed in reflex. “But they’ve been talking to the neighbors, and getting their ears filled with our oddness, I’m sure. And there’s a young copper, called the FBI about us, saying we’re vampires. Their special blokes will be here by morning, and they’ll be looking for all of us then, if they aren’t already. We’ll have to go, and quickly, and we need to put some distance between us and here before we do anything else.”
They slipped up the stairs, and looked out to see the squad car watching the house. It wasn’t hard to see how to get past them; all they needed to do was slip out the side window on the north, and then hop the fence into the Jamesons’ yard and slip out of their back gate. From there, it wasn’t even a mile to the edge of town, and they could vanish into the woods that surrounded the region.
And that’s what they did. By morning, they had put nearly eighty miles behind them, and were somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, headed for the Ohio line by a circuitous route.
William, the old one who kept them all together, the one who’d been old enough to wake when the sun hit him, told them that this was nothing they hadn’t survived before. Starting over was just a part of life for immortals, and they were prepared, weren’t they? He told them they’d go back to California, where they’d enjoyed living a few decades earlier. He had property there, and new, already-prepared identities waiting for all of them. He told them the names they’d be using, and they started getting used to them as they traveled. He would be Horace, from then on.
During the daylight hours, they hid from the sun in caves or abandoned buildings. Anywhere that let them be in complete darkness was acceptable, anything that kept the light of the sun from their skin.
The second morning, Thursday, they were on the outskirts of Zanesville, and took shelter in an old house. Except for the blood Horace had taken from Kenny, none of them had fed since Monday night, and they could feel the need building in them.
“We’re still too close,” Horace said. “The feds will be looking for anything that even sounds like vampires. We’ve got to hold on for a while, ‘til we can get to someplace safer to feed.”
They didn’t like it, but they knew he was right. Friday came, and then Saturday, and they were into Indiana then, not far from Indianapolis. Saturday night saw them make good time in their running, and they turned south to get into a more rural area.
Sunday night they made it into Illinois. Horace had them sticking to back roads, avoiding any people so that they wouldn’t make a mistake, but then as Monday morning approached, they were moving along a farm road when lights suddenly came on in a building not a quarter mile ahead.
“Keep going,” Horace said, “don’t slow down, don’t think about it!”
They couldn’t help it, they were at the limit of their endurance. Even Horace was feeling it, by then, and when they came into view of the general store and saw the skinny old man inside opening it up for the early morning trade, they couldn’t stop themselves. Madeline, the headstrong woman, rushed the door and had the old guy in a death embrace within seconds, and the others joined her. They drained him quickly, right there behind his cash register, spilling very little drop of his precious blood.
“Good, good,” Horace said, “it’ll tide us over! Now let’s...”
Headlights hit the front window, and they rushed to hide in the darkness of the shelves. Horace looked back at the counter and saw that the body was out of sight, as a girl got out of the car out by the gas pump.
Why did you have to stop for gas, now? he asked silently. Why now?
Chapter One
Amber
It sometimes occurs to me that the most vivid memory I have of the day that changed my life forever is that I hated waking up that morning. It wasn’t even four AM, my first day on the early shift at the Kewpee Cafe; I was supposed to be there by five, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so I could take the breakfast orders and pour the endless cups of coffee. I rolled out of my bed, and somehow managed to find my way into the bathroom.
A quick shower got my brain started, but that only made me less inclined to come to life because it let me recall the previous weekend—it was a Monday, did I say that already?—and all the fun I’d had with my friends, many of whom were to be leaving soon. Graduation was over; we were no longer considered children. Since I’d turned eighteen almost a month earlier, I thought that it was high time the world recognized that I was an adult, and not a kid anymore.
And what do adults do? They get up, and they go to work. I’d worked evenings and way too many of the past year’s weekends since just before my senior year began, and now I could work the morning shift like anyone else who didn’t have a history, math, or English exam to get to. Made me wonder if I really wanted to get older at all, and I’m sure I must have breathed a wish that I wouldn’t have to get up so early every day of the summer. God, how I loved to just sleep.
Mother used to tell me to be careful what I wished for. I should have listened. Okay, maybe I had better back up a little bit.
My name is Amber Fair, and as I mentioned before, I am eighteen years old. That’s not anything to brag about, I grant you, until I point out that I’ve been eighteen for more than thirty years, now, and I’m not gonna be getting any older anytime soon.
First, I’ll tell you how I got to be this way, and what it means. I’d ask you to keep an open mind, but somehow I don’t see you accepting all this without some serious emotional difficulties. Just, please, try to believe that I’m not as bad as I might seem. Please?
Okay, then, deep breath—me, I mean—and I’ll go ahead with this.
It was nineteen eighty-one. I was a brand new graduate of West Milton High School in my hometown of Corlin, Illinois, and was about to begin my very first early-morning shift at the Kewpee Cafe, when a simple little mistake caused me to end up in a seriously wrong place at a seriously wrong time.
I’d made it through the shower and getting dressed, and was in my car by a quarter to five. It should have been a ten-minute drive to work, so I figured I was all set until I heard the little dinging noise that meant my seventy-five Mustang II was about to ruin my day by running out of gas.
Did I mention I was a farm girl? It was eight miles to town, and there was no place to buy gas except the County Farm Supply store. When I saw that its lights were on, I whispered a prayer of thanks and pulled up to the one lonely gas pump. I checked my purse and found a five, so I pumped in three dollars worth of no-lead and went inside to pay for it.
The Farm Supply is a little general store, more than a convenience store, but less than a supermarket. It has a lot of things that farmers are likely to need every day, and because of that, it’s a fair-sized building. I was surprised when I got inside and didn’t see Floyd at the register, but even more surprised when I saw five other people standing back among the shelves.
There were two men and three women, and nothing about them suggested farmers. Even the filthy jeans they all wore were the designer kind, not t
he ones we bought at the local Wal-Mart store, and they all had rings and other kinds of jewelry glittering in the bright fluorescent light.
I stopped in the open doorway, suddenly uneasy. “Um, hi,” I said. “Is Floyd—um...?”
The bigger man of the two smiled, a narrow smile. “He went to get something from the back. You can just leave your money by the register, there; I’ll see that he gets it.”
A chill went up my spine; if there was one thing we all knew about Floyd Matteson, it was that he was the Webster Dictionary definition of “distrust.” There was no way he’d allow anyone else to watch his counter. I started to say I’d just wait, but one of the women spoke first.
“Horace,” she said, “I need more!” And then I saw the way she was looking at me, and it suddenly hit me that I wanted to be somewhere else in a hurry.
“Horace, she’s too young!” another woman said. “We all agreed, no kids!"
“I—I’ll come back later...” I said, and I turned to go, but the other man had somehow gotten between me and the door, blocking my way. He looked over my head and said, “Horace?”
The man they’d all called Horace frowned. “Damn,” he said. “We all need more; the skinny little guy wasn’t enough. And the sun’ll be up in minutes...” He looked at me sadly. “Take her,” he said, and the first woman was on me instantly, a hand on my throat and another in my hair, pulling my head over and back, and I saw her open her mouth and the sight of long, pointed teeth coming at my throat told me I was about to die.
I felt the sharp stab of her fangs, and then she clamped her lips over the wound and sucked hard, like my boyfriend Vince when he was trying to give me a hickey. Another stab hit my left wrist, and another my right shoulder; I was dragged further inside and borne down to the floor, and then both of my legs were bitten. I screamed as I felt my jeans ripping, torn so their fangs could strike arteries, could find my blood...
It seemed like an hour went by as the vampires drew out my blood, but it had to have been only minutes. I remember it well, how the fear turned to resignation, and then to calm curiosity, how my futile struggles faded away into weakness. At the end, I lay there barely conscious as, one by one, they released me and stood looking down at what would almost certainly be my corpse within minutes.
“It’s nearly dawn,” Horace said. “We’ve got to get out of the open.” He looked down at me, seeing that I was still at least semi-conscious. “I’m sorry, girl. You just picked the wrong time to stop for gas. If you’d waited just a few minutes more, we’d have been gone. I’m truly sorry.”
I heard him, and I understood, but I was so detached by then that it didn’t really matter. I could feel my heartbeats—or rather, my heart-flutters, because it was beating so weakly and erratically that I kept expecting each quivery pulsation to be the last one.
“She’s so young,” said the woman who’d made that observation before. “Horace, can’t we do something?”
“What, Jen? Heal her? So she can tell the world what happened here? Or would you have me turn her, give us yet another to feed and care for? It’s best this way. She’ll die, and vanish.” He motioned to the other man. “Rudy, get the man. We’ll bury them tonight, after we sleep. Jen, you bring her.”
Jen picked me up and cradled me as if I were a small child. I’m not very big, only five-foot-two and a hundred pounds, but she handled me as if I weighed nothing at all. The man called Rudy did likewise with what I realized was Floyd—or Floyd’s body, I guess, cause there were no signs of life in him at all.
Of course, there weren’t many in me, either. If Jen hadn’t been holding my head against her shoulder, it would have been lolling back just like Floyd’s, but at least I could still move my eyes, still think, though I was pretty fuzzy.
We went out the door, and then they were running into the surrounding forest. I felt Jen’s footsteps, though they were incredibly light, and I saw that she let the other four run on ahead.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into my ear. “I didn’t want us to feed on you, to kill you. If I could, I’d heal you, sweetie, no matter what Horace says, but I can’t, I’m just not old enough for that. I can’t even turn you into one of us—but there’s—there’s another thing I can do, so you can go on, go on living, I mean, but—well, you’d be different, not exactly human anymore, something like being one of us, but not quite...”
She held me up close, then. “Do you want it? To go on living, even it makes you—makes you another kind of monster? Or would you rather go on and die?”
I understood her, but as I’ve said, my mind was fuzzy, confused. I like to think, today, that if I’d known what I would become I would have chosen death, instead—but the truth is that I don’t know what I would have done. I certainly didn’t want to die; I was only just beginning to live.
Jen put her ear to my lips. “Tell me, honey,” she said. “You have to tell me, live or die?”
I could feel my heart failing, and it was all I could do to draw in a breath, but I called in every bit of strength that remained in me and pulled in just enough air to force a weak, nearly silent whisper: “...Liiiiive...”
A smile touched her face and she turned left into deeper woods, running even faster. “I have to do this quickly, and hide you,” she said. “We found a small cave over in here, too small for all of us, but big enough for you. You’ll probably sleep after, and I’ll come back for you tonight, after sundown.”
She stopped, dropped to her knees and carried me through a low opening into a cavern in the hillside, then laid me down on the cold, rocky floor. It was dark inside, and I couldn’t see anything at first, though a bit of light was just peeking over the horizon.
“I can hear your heart slowing,” Jen said. “I’m supposed to do this after it stops, and it’s almost there. If you’re conscious, it’ll hurt—sometimes people are still conscious for a few minutes after their hearts stop—so just be ready for some pain, hon. I’ll do it as quick and easy as I can.” She sat beside me, waiting—waiting for me to die, so she could give me some kind of life. I understood that much, but I was too fuzzy to wonder if she was only telling me that to keep me from panic.
I did wonder about something else, though, and managed to cough out, “...Why...”
“Why am I trying to save you?” She smiled, a sad little smile. “I’m not that old, as a vampire; only a couple years, and I had a teenage daughter. I was sick, dying slowly, when Horace and the others found me. He decided to turn me, rather than just feed on me, and I’ve been with them ever since, but I hate when we kill anyone, and especially someone young.” She brushed my hair out of my eyes.
“So, I guess it’s just that you remind me of Whitney. I often wonder how she is, how she coped when I was gone. I can’t help her, so I’ll do what I can for you. And it’s almost time.”
She was right. I could feel my own heart slowing, as it beat once every three or four seconds, a butterfly-in-the-chest feeling that was almost pleasant—and then it was six seconds, seven—
Ten seconds my heart was silent, and I could feel myself fading out. Jen said, “Now,” and I saw her put her finger in her mouth and bite down on it with her fangs, and then she ripped open my blouse and drove her bloody finger right through my chest into my heart.
Just as it beat one last time.
She’d been right; it hurt, and hurt very badly! And it didn’t let up when she withdrew her finger, but got worse, starting in my heart itself, a terrible, incredible feeling like I suddenly had a horde of tiny, hungry sharks loose inside me! I shuddered as a ripping, shredding feeling wracked my chest and slowly spread.
And then my heart beat again, and I looked at Jen, too weak to speak at all. She was staring at me in horror, but shaking her head. “I was too early,” she said. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go. I’ll come back for you tonight, as soon as the sun goes down!"
She vanished, then, and I lay there alone in the dim cave, pain coursing through me. It felt like a blender’s b
lades were ripping me up inside, and I truly wished I had chosen death, instead.
Minutes passed, but they felt like hours as the unbearable agony traveled through my body. I don’t know how much time passed before it spread as far as my lungs, or down into my stomach, but I swear I could feel the blades spinning inside me. I noticed that as one part of me began to hurt, another part would stop, and by the time the sun was up and daylight flooded my hiding place, I was beginning to drift into sleep for a few minutes at a time.
Looking back on it now, I realize that I was fighting to stay awake, afraid that if I closed my eyes, even for a moment, I might never be able to open them again. Still, somewhere along the way they closed, and I slept, exhausted. When I awoke, the shadows I could see through the entrance told me that it must be at least midafternoon, and I lay there for a while, still gasping for breath, until sleep claimed me again an hour or so later.
Horace
I might have known Jen would try something like this. She’s always so compassionate, especially when we have to kill someone young. If I’d thought about it, I would have had Rudy carry the girl, and let Jen take the skinny old bloke; might have saved her from any temptation, you know? But being immortal doesn’t make one infallible or omniscient; if it did, I’d bloody well be a God, right?
When I realized Jen had turned off, and wasn’t keeping up with us, I was furious. It didn’t take me long to figure out she was trying something, but I thought she’d try to turn the girl to one of us. I didn’t worry that she’d try to do anything else, because she wouldn’t know how. The only experience she had with anything of the sort was when I’d turned her, two years before, and if I’d bloody well known what a pain in the ass she’d be, I might not have done it!