“She started sniffling.”
Rhes shook his head, amazed. “I would never have noticed that.”
“You don’t need to. You’ve got all five senses available to you.”
“Yeah, but I—”
The phone rang, cutting Rhes off. He reached over and picked it up, stirring sauce with his free hand. On the other end of the line he could hear someone gasping for breath, and realized after a moment that he whoever he was listening to was weeping.
“Hello?” he asked. Sarah looked up, immediately aware of the change in his tone.
On the phone, the person seemed to be struggling to gain control of their tears. Finally Rhes heard, “Z’iss Rhes?”
“Yes, this is Rhes? Who’s this?”
“S’Tori.”
“Oh, hey! Tori, are you OK?”
There was a pause and some snuffling. Rhes thought he heard tissues being pulled from a box, rapid-fire, one after another.
“No, ‘spose not,” said Tori.
“What’s wrong?”
“D’you know where … where Two is?” Tori’s words were slurred, and not just from crying. Rhes thought she might be drunk.
“No, sorry. I called her this afternoon and she was home.”
“Not now,” Tori replied.
“Did you try her cell?”
“Juss rings an’ rings. Stupid. I need to t-talk to her now.”
“Well, if I hear anything from her I’ll tell her to call you. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Too late … Rhes, ‘sallover now. They’re gone. Oh, no. No.”
Tori began to sob again. Rhes listened, feeling bewildered.
“Who’s gone? Tori? Who are you talking about?”
“She left me!” Tori shouted. “Left me here, and now they’re gone and she’s not there. You tell her, Rhes. You tell her it’s all her fault.”
“Tori, what happened?”
“Gotta go.”
Tori hung up on him. After a moment, Rhes set the phone down in its cradle and returned to stirring the tomato sauce.
“… the hell was that about?” Sarah asked him.
“Not sure. She was super drunk, and crying so hard I could barely get what she was saying. Except when she started shouting about how Two left her there and that it’s all her fault.”
“I heard that part all the way over here,” Sarah said. “What’s all Two’s fault though? Should we call her back?”
“Probably.”
Sarah waited a moment. “You uh … gonna?”
“You know those scenes in movies where someone goes ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ and they’re always right?”
Sarah nodded.
Rhes frowned. “That’s how I feel right now.”
* * *
Sarah made the call, but Tori wasn’t answering her phone, nor was there any kind of voicemail or answering machine. After letting it ring for nearly five minutes, Sarah gave up, returned the handset to its cradle, and helped Rhes bring dinner to the table. They ate without saying much, contemplating the day’s troubling calls, wondering what was happening to their friends.
“I guess we should check the news,” Rhes said when they were done. “You get the TV, I’ll get the ‘net.”
It hadn’t made the New York news channels, but it didn’t take Rhes long to hunt down what had happened on the Internet. He found the story on a local news site and read it to Sarah, feeling her hand gripping ever tighter on his shoulder as the article explained that, though the police would not reveal the exact nature of the crimes, Tori’s parents had most certainly been tortured before their eventual murder.
When the article reached Tori’s alibi, Sarah’s hand relaxed. “Oh, thank Christ,” she said weakly.
“Did you think she did it?” Rhes asked. He wasn’t trying to accuse her, and thought he had managed to keep any suggestion otherwise out of his voice. Sarah didn’t seem offended.
“Yes. Well, no, I mean … I didn’t think she’d do something like that, but you have to consider the possibility. You know what she was. It’s not that hard to make the leap.”
“No, it’s not, you’re right. My brain just hadn’t made it yet. She’s safe, though. Coroner says they were hours old when Tori found them. She was at that bar during most of it … eight witnesses there, and then the other guy.”
“The motel attendant, after, right. I’m sure she was thrilled to have that written in all the papers. But yeah, I know she didn’t do it. I was just scared that she might have, for a minute.”
“I know. God … what do we do now?”
Sarah looked bewildered. “I have no idea. I don’t think we can just pack up and go to Ohio, at least not for a couple of days. We’ve got work, and Molly’s got school … but Tori’s going to need all kinds of help, and I don’t know if she’s got anyone out there or not. We have to find Two first.”
“Why didn’t Tori call us before? Christ, it’s been more than a day already.”
“Don’t know. She’s probably not thinking very clearly, and really, she didn’t even want to call us. She wanted to call Two. We were the backup plan.”
“Ok, so what now?”
“We find Two.” Sarah looked very concerned.
“Tori said she’s not home.”
“Tori said she’s not answering. That doesn’t mean she’s not home … not at all. She may not be able to answer. Hon, we have to find her. This is really bad. I don’t think it’s random coincidence that something like this is happening to Tori. If someone’s targeting her, don’t you think that Two’s in danger?”
“Oh. Shit, Sarah …”
“Right. Let’s go.”
Rhes and Sarah left their dishes on the table and headed for Manhattan.
Chapter 3
Manhattan by Moonlight
Two was drowning in blood.
The liquid ran down her forehead in rivers, pooled in the corners of her eyes, dripped past her lips and swirled hot on her tongue. Eyes shut, she opened her mouth wide and drank, drank, searching for the source, bathing in blood, immersing herself completely. Yet even in this bliss, this joy, this beauty, there was still that cold ball in her stomach. There was still the dull grey veil that sucked the life from her vision, even with her eyes shut. It covered her dreams, destroyed her fantasies, brought her always back to harsh reality.
This isn’t real.
Yes it is.
No.
Two turned off the shower and rested her head against the slate tiles that lined the wall. The liquid running from her hair, dripping on the floor, steaming on her pink skin was water, not blood. There was no blood for her, or at least none that mattered. There was only her own, being pushed through her veins by a heart not yet slowed to stillness by sickness or accident, age or apathy.
The blood was gone, buried and probably burned to ashes below the bones of what had once been a lavish mansion situated in the forests of southern New York state, near the Pennsylvania border. The blood was buried there with the man she loved, the vampire Theroen. She had not had the courage to explore the charred remains of the mansion to find out whether his body had survived the blaze.
It didn’t matter anyway. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; Theroen was dead.
When she had arrived at the mansion and found it burnt to the ground, she had sat there for a time on the hood of her car, smoking cigarettes and looking at the pile of charcoal and ash that had, for a few short months, been her home. It was during this time of reflection, as she replayed over and over in her mind the events that had lifted her up from the streets and brought her salvation only to leave her alone again, that it seemed the grey veil had descended to cover her sight. The cold feeling had begun to gnaw at her stomach, the first stirrings of despair. The house was gone. Theroen was gone.
That part of her life was over, and now all that remained was the time ahead, time that seemed to stretch like a vast sea, calm and still and empty. She could not forget the warmth of the blood, could not
take that taste from her lips. Life under the sun offered no comfort, but she knew that the task before her was daunting. Finding another vampire would be difficult. Convincing that vampire, or any other, to bring her back into the world that she longed to inhabit might well prove impossible.
When she returned from Ohio she began her search in earnest, and in the following weeks, as the last vestiges of hope faded and the icy despair within her grew, Two began to withdraw. She did it intentionally, to protect her friends and herself. She could see that she was hurting them, and this saddened her, but she couldn’t lift the grey veil, couldn’t shake the grief or erase the pain. She couldn’t bring back what she had lost, and her friends’ attempts at consolation seemed only to drive this home all the more clearly. So she had established distance, losing herself in the cold and the grey, giving in to the apathy that her brain had begun to produce in a last attempt to counteract the sadness and hopelessness that threatened to overtake her completely.
The tile was growing cool against her skin as the warmth from the shower dispersed, and goosebumps were prickling up on her arms. Two sighed, opened her eyes, and began to dry herself off.
* * *
The light on her phone was blinking. Voicemail, probably Rhes again. Two ignored it, not wanting to deal with him. Rhes had managed to hurt her, a little, the first real emotion she’d felt in some time. She had thought she’d inured herself to everything at this point, but when he brought up Molly there had been a few seconds where the pain had resurfaced, bright and clear, like sunlight shining through good crystal.
Two had sighed and forced herself to shut it out, and shortly thereafter the conversation had ended. She had sat for a time on her balcony, as she often did during the afternoons, smoking cigarettes and sipping on a glass of bourbon, and then had taken her shower. Tonight she would walk, as she did every night, with no real hope of finding the thing she was looking for, but with nothing else to do, and no real reason to do anything else even if there had been.
At last the sun was setting, and she could begin. Two had to wait for it before starting her search because of the nature of what she was hunting. Theroen had told her that only some vampires could abide the sun, and that of those, few preferred to spend any significant time underneath it. When the last sliver of red had dipped below the horizon and dusk covered Manhattan, Two would begin her walk. She never planned, never mapped out a route or decided on a path. She let her feet move her according to random whim, the timing of the street lights, the movement of the crowds.
Two leaned back and glanced at the clock sitting by her phone, noting that the sun should fully set in another thirty minutes. The light on her phone blinked and blinked, as if chiding her for not checking her messages. She thought about listening to Rhes apologizing for upsetting her and grimaced, then got up, crossed the room, picked up the phone and hit the button. The moment the automated voice broke into its scripted greeting, Two quickly pressed the series of keys that would clear the mailbox, waited for confirmation that this was done, and slammed the phone back into its cradle. She walked out onto her balcony again, lit a cigarette, and stood watching the traffic down below turn fuzzy and indistinct in the dimming light. Time crawled. Two smoked.
“I hate you,” she said to the crowds of people on the sidewalk below, to the cars and trucks and limousines that crawled along Sixth Avenue towards the theatres to the north. It wasn’t true, of course; there was nothing left anymore but the ghost of this feeling, and of countless others. She didn’t hate these people, nor envy them, because she didn’t care. Her body survived, even as she drove it into the ground, subsisting for the most part on cigarettes, bourbon, and water. She waited for the sun to set, thinking of Theroen.
“There are vampires in Manhattan,” he had told her once. “I know few of them, unfortunately. Abraham keeps me from interacting with them any more than is absolutely necessary, but I have met three or four of them. There is a council that he sits on … lords over, I imagine. He’s the oldest vampire in this country by hundreds of years.”
“What does the council do?” Two had asked.
“According to Abraham, most of what they do is pointless deliberation and setting meaningless laws. It does seem a bit absurd. Abraham is their chief, yet he follows no law but his own, and never has. Of course, it’s to his advantage to be the head of the council. If nothing else, it allows him insight into any plotting that might be done against him.”
“Are most of the vampires like you, or like him?”
“Neither, really. They are individuals, people like you and I, though shaped somewhat by their bloodlines. There are four types of vampires: Eresh, Ashayt, Ay’Araf, and Burilgi. The basic mechanics are the same … we drink blood to survive and use blood to reproduce, but there are substantial differences in physiology and psychological makeup.”
“You and Abraham are both Eresh, right?”
“We are. He is, so I am, so shall you be. Obviously, given the differences between Abraham and I, it would be a mistake to say that the blood within a given vampire determines who that person is. Still, it has some effect. Ashayt vampires are often spiritual or creative, and can be prone to depression. The Ay’Araf are warriors, for the most part, people who not only excel at conflict but actively seek it out. They value strength and speed, mastery of fighting skills, and are often callous or abrupt, uninterested in politics or self-expression. Amusing, really … Ay’Araf himself was a priest and a poet.”
“There’s so much to learn,” Two had told him, and she remembered his smile; that maddening, subtle grin that made her want to grab him, hold him tight, kiss him until her lips were raw.
“There is all the time in the world,” Theroen had replied. The words had sounded so sweet, then, coming as they did from his mistaken belief that he had started Two down the path to immortality. Now they seemed to her only deeply ironic. “All the time in the world” had turned out to be little more than a handful of weeks.
Two watched the last hint of sunlight fade from the sky, watched the streetlights flicker on, watched as her own reflection grew ghostly, pink and blue and purple in the afterglow of the sunset. Her one-bedroom condo in SoHo, modest by New York standards, lent her views of Sixth Avenue and Prince Street. The evening crowds were thick, a sea of people seeking dinner or entertainment or both. Perhaps her vampire was out there, somewhere.
Maybe tonight, she thought, and then laughed. It was a harsh, angry little sound. Yes, maybe tonight she would find what she was looking for, and if not, then maybe the next night. It didn’t matter. She would search until she fell dead on her feet, even though she no longer believed that she would ever meet another vampire. There was nothing else to do and, as Theroen had once told her, she had all the time in the world.
* * *
The rain had stopped and now the city was cool and damp. The sound of water rushed from the sewers below her, trickled from the walls to her left, echoed from little streams of the sidewalk. New York steamed and smoldered and stank, and Two paid it no attention. She had lived her entire life in this place, and it seemed to her there was no more natural a setting in the world.
It wouldn’t have changed anything, the rain; she would have gone on her walk even in the midst of a tempest, but at least now there were people on the streets to survey. She would not have to spend the entire night ducking into bars and clubs to catalog the people within. Two zipped her leather jacket against the wind, thinking of a time when she would not have even perceived the chill. With a bitter grin, she lit a cigarette and began to walk.
The evening passed. Two’s steady but aimless path took her through SoHo and Little Italy, moving in a general eastward direction until she reached Second Avenue, where she turned north, heading up into the East Village, past Union Square, and into the Flatiron district. Finding this area nearly deserted by Manhattan standards, she made her way west along 18th Street. She scanned each passerby as she went, looking for the right combination: pale face, oddly lu
minescent eyes, an ethereal sense of balance. Everywhere she walked, Two looked for vampires and found none.
This did not surprise her anymore, though it still pained her. She had spent more than enough time doing the math, figuring out the odds, coming to the understanding that in a city of twenty million, the relative handful of vampire inhabitants would be almost impossible to locate. There might even be several hundred – she had no way of knowing for sure – but Two saw more people than that in a given hour of walking. The probability was akin to the needle-in-a-haystack conundrum, except the needle and each individual piece of hay were in constant motion.
When she reached Ninth Avenue she turned north again, moving along the border between the Garment District and the neighborhood the city government was trying to rebrand as “Clinton,” but which would, she knew, always remain Hell’s Kitchen. The fabric shops gave way to theatres, the streets overloaded with garish neon signs and old-style marquees. Two found it possible, even likely, that the type of vampire she was looking for might frequent the New York theatre scene, but she found herself unable to face the crowds of tourists and so turned left instead, making her way to Tenth Avenue via 48th Street before turning south.
Near midnight she stopped for a slice of pizza, more out of the need to fuel the rest of her walk than out of any desire to eat. She sat on a stool at a counter, looking through the plate-glass window in front of her, watching the people walking by. It was a Saturday night, and the New York nightlife was in full swing. Two knew that there were still four good hours of searching left to her.
She continued her walk south, listening to the sounds of cars passing, people talking, music blaring from the open doors of various restaurants and bars. She was headed toward the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel, an area not well-regarded, but was not afraid. She had not been afraid of New York in a long time, not since the days before the needle had gotten hold of her. The city’s dangers paled in comparison to those she had faced on the grounds of the mansion. There was nothing in New York more dangerous than Abraham.
The II AM Trilogy Collection Page 32