Paranormal After Dark

by Rebecca Hamilton

  “It’s okay, Liz,” he said, more out of courtesy than concern. He picked her up and took her away, holding her tighter and tighter as Sebastian’s hold over her faded and she began to struggle.

  Step two was leaving her while he gorged, ensuring that he was strong enough to last the three days while her body twisted itself into something new, and there was only one place to leave her. He ducked into Leland’s house and set her down, taking her hand to lead her inside, and pointed to the cellar door.

  “You’ll have to wait there for a while,” he said. “I’ll c-come back for you. Watch your step.”

  She stepped back against him, away from the darkness. “Hell no!”

  So he gave her a nudge, and she overbalanced and toppled down the stairs. He meant to go after her, to apologize, but was not able to make himself care. There was no death looming, anyway, so he shut the door and locked it, having entirely forgotten what else was down there.

  “This’ll work out,” Sebastian told him. “Don’t you think?”

  “She’s going to hate me. She’ll hate me more if you hurt her first.”

  Sebastian thought about that for a moment, bowing his head in what almost looked like shame, then straightened and shrugged. The priest was gone, for the moment. “I’ll wipe her memory. You can start fresh. Go find something to eat. There’s a feed lot up that creek. Cows are big enough for you, aren’t they?”

  And Lenny slipped away.

  * * *

  THE LONGER LENNY was away, the easier thinking became. Not fighting the command in his blood – that was still impossible – but recognizing it, analyzing it, and coming to understand it. He fed from the cows at the lot, strengthened himself, and began to realize what was about to happen.

  At first, he felt an echo of horror at what he was going to be forced to do, but it was not real. The horror was a phantom pain, and he felt it only because he thought he should. When he realized that he really did not care, it vanished again. The truth was that he wanted a second mind, a second heart grafted into him. He had never felt quite right alone. It would not be the same as being subsumed into Kate, but at least there would be someone else there, someone not handicapped by his scars. He would not have chosen Liz. It should have been someone he loved, someone who, given the choice, had chosen him in return. By the time she woke, empty of memories, neither of them would be a whole person, but together, they would still be closer to it than he was on his own.

  Sebastian’s coercion would be his justification. He need feel no guilt, even though he could not guarantee he would not have done the same if he had been free.

  He returned in time to find the back door open, hear the air split by gunfire, and understand that everything had gone wrong one last time. Sebastian was silent; there was no compulsion left in Lenny’s mind or in his blood, but the numbness had been replaced by shock. His body moved without his consent. He ran for the door, stumbled, picked himself up again.

  Sebastian lay in a pool of dark blood on the kitchen floor, his torso full of arrows. Two pinned him to the linoleum, one dangerously close to his heart. The burned outline of a Star of David blackened his cheek. There were voices nearby, living heartbeats, but they did not matter. Sebastian was conscious, his dark eyes wide, mouth full of blood. He knew how close he was to true death, and he feared what waited for him beyond the Veil. Lenny pressed a stabilizing hand to his chest and worked one of the arrows free, ignoring the agonized whimpers.

  “I’m your friend,” he promised. The Kate part of him screamed in frustration.

  The holes began to close as soon as the arrow was removed, but though Lenny helped him up, Sebastian could barely stand. He had lost too much, and the shafts remaining in his chest pained him. “Run,” he whispered.

  Lenny shook his head, but Sebastian gripped his hand weakly. “You’re a bad runner. They’ll catch you. I’ll keep them from following, and I’ll catch up when you’re far enough away. Go now.” He pulled out of Lenny’s grasp and staggered to the cellar door, wrapping his arm around the throat of the woman who stood there.

  Lenny did not move. He could not. He could not picture Sebastian surviving a second go. He was already hurt, already weak, and though he had the high ground and a hostage, there was someone down there with a bow and arrow, come prepared for killing vampires. Sebastian would kill again, and then he would die, and then they would come for Lenny as well. He would never have a chance to leave that house.

  The entirety of his existence had condensed into the present, and neither the future nor the past meant anything.

  He heard Sebastian screech in pain at the same moment he felt a threshold spring into existence behind him. His threshold, his defense. If his life lasted only a few minutes longer, that house held the remainder of it. It was as home as he was going to get, as home as he might ever get.

  And it gave him a way to redeem himself.

  He had already lost himself. He may not have seen it before, but he saw it then. He remembered the woman at the motel, laid out anemic and silent, drowning in drugged pleasure she had not wanted. He had done that. He remembered Liz duct taped in the cold, leaving her childhood behind for good. He had done that, too. He had torn off a man’s face and beaten his head against a wall, and just thinking about it made Lenny want to strike out again. He had wanted to kill. He had wanted to take a human child and alter the fabric of her nature to suit his own needs. He had let himself hate.

  He would not run while a friend died.

  The house was his. He was home.

  “Get out,” he whispered at Sebastian’s back. “You’re not welcome here.”

  A bowstring twanged and an arrowhead sprouted between Sebastian’s shoulder blades, and his clothes collapsed, empty, in a pile of bloodstained denim and polyester.

  Lenny flinched in anticipation, but no death hit him.

  That was good. That meant it had worked, and Sebastian was gone, forced outside by the magic that kept a vampire from existing uninvited within a home. It would have hurt, Lenny knew. He had been through that before, and being torn atom from atom and reassembled elsewhere was not pleasant, but neither was it death. That was good.

  And he would die. That did not frighten him. He had seen too many deaths to be afraid of his own. It was not his time, and that was not right, but it was not exactly wrong, either. His knees gave out, and he sank to the floor to wait for the boy with the bow. He did not know Liz very well, but he knew she would not be friends with someone who would cause pain for its own sake. It would be quick.

  He shut his eyes.

  And snapped them open again.

  They would kill him. They would see him die, watch him crumble to ash, and realize that a vampire’s true death looked nothing like Sebastian’s disappearance.

  He saw them emerge from the cellar, carrying Liz. Carrying? She looked terrible, drained of life, and he could sense her weakness closing in. Leland’s doing. Sebastian’s hold over him must have broken at some point. It was slow enough that an ambulance would have plenty of time to arrive and save her, if her friends were quick enough. They would not be quick enough if Lenny distracted them, if his own death alerted them to Sebastian’s continued unlife.

  The boy with the bow, the boy from the funeral, and a woman with a Taser. They did not see him, too busy trying desperately to keep the last of their number alive.

  Lenny moved slowly, mechanically, out the back door.

  Suddenly, his life expanded again. He could take Sebastian and run. Surely, the endless chase was finally over. It did not matter what happened to Daniel Leland. Kate was gone, her spirit at peace, as it had always been. He and Sebastian could disappear. The wizards had never found them and never would, not if they went to ground together…

  And then what? More years of tyranny and abuse? Lenny sagged. There was no other option. If he ran, it would be a betrayal, and Sebastian would lose whatever stability he had gained. He would come after him. If he stayed, he could only expect more of the sam
e. Believing Sebastian could become a real person, sane and functional, was folly. He could hope for the best, yes, but never expect more than the worst.

  Lenny slid around the perimeter of the house, just beyond the threshold, and found Sebastian in the dead flowerbed outside the bedroom. He had taken nothing but himself with him when the magic thrust him out, and he lay naked in the frozen dirt. The arrows had been left behind, but the holes remained; his body was too dry to heal them. Between the wounds was an old scar, the imprint of a cross burned deep into his flesh. There had been no one to remove his pendant when he changed.

  And he was both at once, the body and the spirit, the monster and the priest, Padre Sebastian.

  Chapter 19

  LENNY HID SEBASTIAN in the car for a short time, but he knew they could not stay there. The temperature had risen to just slightly above freezing, and the snowbank he had built to conceal the car would shrink until they were found. He did not trust his driving ability to get them away safely, and he did not dare leave Sebastian alone long enough to steal gas for the nearly-empty tank. If the temperature rose, they would be discovered, but if it dropped, they would freeze.

  And Sebastian was healing too slowly.

  He had lost so much blood and experienced so much trauma, and the cold leeched the strength from him until he could not even regain consciousness. It must have taken so much effort over the last day, trying to be a real person, trying to be a friend. Failing, yes, but the attempt had to count for something.

  Lenny shivered in the cold until his skin began to crystallize. He had to get them out, but before they could run, Sebastian had to be back on his feet. The feedlot was the only thing that came to mind. Cattle. He had never seen Sebastian feed from an animal, did not even know if he was able, but he could think of no other solution.

  He wrapped Sebastian’s limp body in the blanket and pushed out of the car, glancing toward the road. There was a broad open field between them and the cover of the trees, and if someone happened to drive past, he could not avoid being spotted. For the moment, though, it was all clear. He carried Sebastian across the field, toward the creek.

  It was hard going. Sebastian was too weak to be heavy, but he was much larger than Lenny, and carrying him was awkward.

  It became even more so when Lenny heard the sound of a motor.

  He dared a look back and caught sight of a pickup truck pulling off to the side of the road. It sputtered to a stop and spat out the woman with the Taser. Only now, she had a knife, as well, and she had seen him.

  He did not want to run. His balance was already poor, the problem compounded by his unwieldy burden. But though he shuffled into the trees as quickly as he could, the woman gained on him. There was nowhere to hide, no convenient underbrush or well-placed ravine.

  So he ran, and he fell, and while he scrambled to pick Sebastian up, the woman was on him in seconds.

  “No one touches my kids,” she growled. She planted a foot in his back and pushed him down, stabbing her Taser toward his ribs.

  He wriggled away, leaving his jacket behind, and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “P-p-please,” he begged. “I just want to leave. I’m g-going.”

  She was not interested in listening. She drove him back, slashing with her knife, until he tripped over a root. He curled in on himself, raising his arms to defend his face, and the tip of her knife glanced off his sternum and plunged into his lung. It made a wet schlup as she pulled it out and went in for a second try.

  She struck at his face, but he managed to catch hold of her wrist. He shoved her back.

  Despite being short and round, there was something predatory in the woman’s posture. She circled as he scrambled back up, clutching his chest.

  Both of them locked eyes on Sebastian simultaneously.

  She moved. Lenny moved. They converged on the unconscious body, the woman with her knife and Lenny with fangs extended.

  “Please,” he tried again. “Let us leave. We won’t c-come back.”

  She rushed, and he tripped, and she was on top of them both, and all he could do was push her away. He pushed too hard. She flew into the air and hit a tree, and she did not come back down. The air grew heavy as she scrabbled uselessly at the branch protruding from her stomach. Her legs thrashed in midair.

  Lenny watched her dying. It was not like some expected it to be. There were no shadows drawing closer. It was a contraction, a birth. Her world pulled in close, enveloping her, pressing hard to force her through the Veil between worlds. Drops of blood pattered into the snow.

  Dying by his hand.

  He crawled up the trunk after her and tried to slide her off the branch, but she screamed more horribly than he had known a dying woman could. The pressure grew, and he was too close. It pressed on him, too, straining the threads that kept him bound to his body. He was too close, would be too close no matter how far away he ran, causally tied to this death.

  He opened his ghost sense to its fullest and grasped at her soul in futility, begging it to stay nearby. He bit into his wrist and painted her lips with his blood, sank his teeth into her shoulder and took some back. But her eyes were already clouding over, her heartbeat slowing. Thud. Thud. Thud. Silence.

  He waited for the next beat to come, but it did not, and one by one, the tiny sparks between her brain cells flickered and went out. He pressed his forehead to hers and squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to the last of those dimming lights, holding it steady with everything he had.

  And when it sputtered and died, it took part of him with it.

  The death tore through him, as they all did. This one did worse. It tore him to pieces and drove them apart, dragged the heart of him out of his body.

  He was not aware when he fell from the tree and hit the ground. He was not aware of Sebastian waking, shrieking in pain as his sins caught up with him, ghost sense bombarded with centuries of murder. He should help. He should go to him, comfort him, but Sebastian’s pain was just punishment, and he could not make himself care. Thought had become an impossibility. He was scattered, and there was too little of him left. All he knew was an overwhelming fatigue, the need to sink into the earth and rest.

  The tattered husk ran north. When it had lost the strength to run, it walked, and when it had lost the strength to walk, it crawled, and when it had crawled as far as it could, it froze.

  Dreams came. The earth rose around it, and sleep descended.

  Chapter 20

  the end

  SOMETIMES, HE STILL dreams about the girl.

  He is always blind in the dreams, must be blind, because there is no way it could be too dark for him to see. He is blind, but he can hear everything, feel everything, and reality dissolves.

  She gasps when his hand closes over her mouth, and he can feel that tiny suction, then the wriggling and flopping as he holds her tightly from behind, muffling her screams with his flesh. He whispers desperate consolation in her ear until the feeble spell of his voice finally takes hold, and she relaxes into his arms, shivering with the sobs that cannot quite escape.

  He tapes her arms and legs, wraps her in his jacket, and sits with her through the night. Her breath freezes on the air, and he can almost hear the chime of those ice-crystal clouds. His skin freezes and cracks. He would bleed, but he has no blood left, and the cold makes him tired, as if he were a reptile. He could almost sleep.

  Sebastian is in the dream, too. He plucks the telephone away and lashes out with a burning fist. Broken teeth, jaw, ribs. One punch, one kick, no more.

  “Too late,” he says. “I’m already back. Running to a teenager for help? Really, Hugo? You’re such a goddamn baby.”

  His hands are hot, and they can be soothing when they want to be. They stroke away the bruises, and he layers his voice with Power, whispering away the pain.

  “I’m Leonard. I’m n-not Hugo, I’m Leonard. Leonard…”

  “Shhh, don’t worry about it. You want the kid, that’s okay. You can have her. My gift.” His
hot hands move south, gentle still. “Don’t cry, okay? I hate you when you cry.”

  She is waiting when they get there.

  She gasps when his hand closes over her mouth, and he can feel that tiny suction, then the wriggling and flopping as he holds her tightly from behind, muffling her screams with his flesh. His mouth is swollen and full of tears, and his voice is so much weaker than Sebastian’s. He cannot take away her fear, only make her stop twisting to give his poor ribs a rest.

  He sits with her through the night and listens to her hurting, but caring is impossible by then. Sebastian is in his head, squeezing his heart so tight he can barely feel, stroking his mind into silence. His throat burns with thirst. His veins ache, empty and hollow and screaming with lust, but he can’t care. He leaves without speaking to her, even though she begs, even though her faith is shattering into sunbursts on the dusty floor.

  He sits in the car and presses himself close against the blasting heater. He is blind, but he seems to see deep brown eyes, slightly tilted, smiling, fringed with dark, sooty lashes. He could drown in those eyes, has drowned in them before, just like so many others. Bleak pools full of the drowned, full of bodies. The back of his mind is full of struggling, the clinking of chains. Sebastian is bleeding her. The blood is the life, and so much more. Teeth penetrate. Essence is shared. Eventually, she stops fighting.

  Tomorrow, he thinks. I’ll do it tomorrow. He won’t bleed her if she’s mine.

  But he doesn’t really care.

  When he pushes her down the stairs, she has Kate’s voice. “Lyonya,” she cries, but that never happened, and Kate was a thousand years ago, and she hurt him more than he could ever have hurt her.

  When he runs, the girl is probably dead. Sebastian’s voice is gone, and his skull echoes emptily.

  Sometimes, he still dreams about the girl, but when he wakes, the world is white, and his bones are ice, and his name has bled away with the last of his strength. They call it permafrost for a reason, you know, and his hands are bound up in dirt that does not sing and cannot heal. The ghosts here are pale and ancient. They speak in tongues he does not know.