“So would have I,” Rhett said, a raw bitterness in his voice. “I will be next time.” It made him sick that Charlie had beaten him. For years he had listened to Charlie boast about his combat skills. Charlie was a big talker but he had always been sloppy. His reflexes slowed by second guessing. His strength flabby. His charisma cheap. He never thought he’d lose a fight to Charlie. He never would again.
Rhett was a company man, Venjamin could count on that. He was not like Charlie. He felt no love or attachment to his family. However, he liked the deception and power Venjamin had bestowed upon him. He liked belonging to something larger, something with a purpose. Endless centuries without purpose had to be torture, Dr. Venjamin imagined. No, Rhett would never turn into Charlie. Rhett would destroy Charlie.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. Do you know what vehicle they’re in?”
“Angus said he saw a van—blue. That’s all he got. But he wants the little Murray child. I’ve never seen fangs sink in so deep.”
Dr. Venjamin smiled at the image. One of the few injuries a vampire never healed completely from were bites from his own kind. Angus would have two little scars on the back of his neck for the rest of his very long life. Harry had strength and determination.
“Remind him, Valerie Murray and her children are not to be harmed. I want Charlie to be disposed of. Any vampire who harms the rest of the Murray family will also be disposed of.”
“Then I need to talk to you about Drew.”
“He went after Amelia again.” Dr. Venjamin knew that the slick vampire wouldn’t be able to control himself. The doctor had examined Eduardo Alvarez. The boy was still in the exam room. His parents, both born-vampires, were prompt in bringing him to the hospital. They were worried out of their minds. He hadn’t seemed ill at all, they told the doctor, healthy and happy. Dr. Venjamin assured them that he just wanted to run some tests and had them wait on site until the results came in. So far nothing seemed different, nothing special about his blood. But Dr. Venjamin had one last test to run.
“Yes. Nothing sexually this time. He went straight for the throat.”
“It’s a good thing for Mr. Sanders that Amelia is such a strong little girl. I still want him on the hunt. He’s got a connection to her. It will be your responsibility to see that he does not harm her. Because if he does, both of you will be disposed of.”
“Yes sir. Sir, what is the town being told about the Murrays?”
He smiled. “A bad human. The whole family is sick in the hospital. You too. Marie was the only one to be spared. She’s terribly worried about you.”
Rhett smiled. “I’m sure she is.”
“That will be all. I want you back on the street. If Charlie is aiming for New York, I want you on him. You know him better than anyone.”
“Yes sir.” He turned to leave the doctor.
“Rhett, is Drew still in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Send him in please.”
Waiting for the second vampire to enter, Venjamin opened his desk drawer and took out the revolver that he threatened Drew with the first time. He causally laid it on the desk where Drew would be certain to see it. Then he called his secretary to bring Eduardo down.
Drew entered cocky and unafraid. Then his eyes saw the gun on the desk.
“You said Amelia’s blood was the first time blood had ever sung to you, correct?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah. Blood’s blood. Hers is like a drug.”
“Have you bitten other crossbreeds or born-vampires before?”
Drew shifted his weight, his eyes going back to the gun. “A lick here or there in the heat of the moment.”
“And it never tasted like Amelia’s?”
“Never.”
He nodded. There was a knock at his door and a nurse escorted young Eduardo in. Drew’s eyes immediately looked the nurse up and down, his senses alerted to the fact that she was human and food. He only looked though. So far, he had no interest in the child.
“Hi Eduardo. How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Fine. Can I go home now? I’m hungry.”
“Soon as you leave here Nurse Mary will get you something to eat, okay? Eduardo, this is my colleague Mr. Sanders. I want him to do a special test on you that only he can perform. Then you can go home, okay?”
Eduardo looked up at Drew unimpressed. Drew, on the other hand, looked down at the twelve year old with fear. He knew what the doctor wanted him to do. He couldn’t believe it. He had heard stories that the doc was crazy. He had heard rumors about the fates of his illegitimate children. He never really believed them though. Not the “death tests” to explore the extent of injuries a crossbreed could recover from. Throwing them out into sunlight to watch them explode into ash. Dissecting them alive in order to discover how their immortality worked. No man who went to so much trouble recreating the 1950’s with their gender roles and family values could be so cold hearted and cruel. Yeah, he fed his own kind to vampires. But he was just a man who knew the score. Dr. Venjamin was on a quest. Drew had seen that many times before in his long life. He wasn’t quite sure what that quest was, but it involved protecting and understanding vampires. He may slaughter humans, but he would never hurt a born or crossbred vampire. At least that was what Drew had always thought.
“Okay,” the boy said. His voice was just getting to the age where it was beginning to crack. His ‘okay’ still sounded like a child’s. Drew had never been into feeding off of children. Girls, some of them pretty young, but not children.
Drew looked at the doctor. “Is this for real?”
“Harry Murray bit this boy. Said his blood called out to him. I want to know if his blood sings. Only you can tell me this.”
“How much do you want me to take?”
“Enough for you to be certain.”
“He’s small yet. He doesn’t have that much in him. I might—“
“It’s a risk science is willing to take. Do it.”
Drew bent the boy’s head to the side exposing his neck. The kid just let him. He was that trusting of the doctor. Drew looked at the doctor one last time waiting for him to yell stop as if it was a test.
Drew bared his fangs and bit into the boy’s neck. He whimpered a little, struggled a little, but not much. Dr. Venjamin did not flinch at the sight. Neither did the human nurse. No, his blood was blood. Nothing special.
“No, it’s just blood,” Drew said releasing the boy. The child instantly went to the nurse for protection. She let him cling to her without emotion.
Dr. Venjamin nodded as he walked behind his desk and took a seat. “Very good. Now finish him.”
“What? Why?”
“You’ll need your strength for the hunt. And I can’t put him back into Sangre Valley to tell his parents and classmates that Dr. Venjamin had another vampire feed off him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I do nothing that I am not sure of.”
Drew torn the boy away from the nurse.
“No, please, don’t. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. I just want to go home. Please. I won’t say anything.”
“It’ll all be okay,” Dr. Venjamin told him then nodded to Drew. Quickly Drew drained him and let the child’s body fall in a heap to the ground.
“Any other children that you’d like me to murder?” Drew asked.
“I never realized you had a conscience, Drew.”
“I don’t know anything about a conscience. But there is a line I don’t cross.”
“You will cross any line I tell you to! Nurse, can you handle the body on your own?”
She nodded lifting the child’s corpse into her arms.
“I’ll be down to inform the parents in a moment.”
She left with the body of Eduardo Alvarez. Drew wondered what the hell he had gotten himself caught up in. Sangre Valley was a fun game to play. Easy food. And it was kind of like having a real life again. But tonight had not been fun.
D
r. Venjamin calmly picked up the revolver and shot Drew Sanders in the bicep. Drew howled out cursing. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing! You shot me!” All his instincts told him to rip the doctor’s throat out. He could be across that desk before the doctor could get off another shot. He could end his life just as easily as he had ended the boy’s. Yet he resisted. It might be more dangerous to go after the doctor than to stand here shot.
“Yes, you remember that the next time you see Amelia Murray. She is not to be harmed in any way. I need her. I don’t need you. Go to the emergency room. Have them remove the bullet. Then I want you on the Murrays’ trail. Get out of my office.”
Drew got out of there as quick as he could.
After the Alvarez experiment, Venjamin was more certain than ever that Amelia, and only Amelia, was the answer to his own immortality. He wanted her back in Sangre Valley as soon as possible.
Chapter Sixteen
Sunburn
Valerie and the children were glued to the windows at night as they trucked down I-40 East. John was fascinated with the modern cars. It disturbed Valerie slightly how he would point vehicles out to his father and say, “What kind of car is that? Can we steal one of those next time?” Charlie seemed to know the name and model of every vehicle they passed. He relished in his son’s attention and the distraction from their situation. On the radio they tested out different styles of music. Harry loved the heavy mental and the hip hop. John hated all of it. He wanted Elvis or the Four Seasons. Charlie would turn to oldies stations to appease him. Charlie asked Amelia what she’d like to listen to. Whatever. That was all she would say. Valerie couldn’t handle the rap or metal for long. Eventually she would snap to change the station or turn it off. She seemed to prefer silence.
They saw billboard signs and drove through cities lit up as bright as day. John and Harry wanted to know what cities they were in, if Charlie spent time there, if it was anything like Sangre Valley. Every time they stopped for gas, Harry wanted to know if they could get a human too. Out of his mother’s ear range, Charlie would promise soon. Thank God, he was still connected to his children. His boys did not hate him. They were curious and fearless and ready to embrace their new lives. All except Amelia. He could feel the cold radiating from her. She refused to speak to him or even look at him. If her face wasn’t pressed against the glass like her siblings drinking in the outside world, she was drawing or writing in her sketch book. She did loathe him. But he wondered if she despised him for subjecting her to Venjamin’s experiment, or because he had lied to her about humans. As a child she had always been fond of humans, wanting to keep them as pets instead of eating them for dinner. She was a sensitive soul. She just needed time to adjust. He would just have to keep confident that she would come around and forgive him eventually. Until then his heart wouldn’t be whole.
Valerie also said little to him. Her whole demeanor was hostile, the way she sat, the way she looked at him, the way she spoke to him. He did not know what to say to her, where to even begin to mend things between them. He knew she felt that he had betrayed her, endangered her and the kids. And he had. He wouldn’t deny it. But he had never lied about loving her, though that didn’t seem to matter. Given time maybe it would. His only solace was knowing that they were bound together for life. As much as she hated it—and Lord knew that she hated it—she needed him. She wouldn’t be able to survive in this world without him. She could not abandon him no matter how much she may want to at this moment. They would always be together. For him, that would be enough.
The nights flew by. The day lit hours were the worse. He suited up with a hooded shirt, ski mask, and gloves. The skies were gray and full of precipitation the first day. Even so, he kept his family cocooned in the back with blankets hung over the windows and as a partition between the front and back seats. As his family slept, he drove. Those were lonely hours.
The second day was bright. The night had been clear, and with trepidation he watched the sun rise over the horizon. There was not a cloud in the sky to dull the sun’s beams. His foot hit the gas pedal harder as if he could possibly make his destination in the seconds before the sun made its grand entrance. It was irrational to speed, he realized, since he was driving east, directly towards the evil ball of light. The beams extended across the road towards him like the hands of death reaching out for him. Soon the van was filled with the vile light. Every millimeter of skin that the ski mask did not cover was set aflame in a burning, blinding pain. He screamed in agony clutching at his face as his lips flaked away. He accidentally knocked off his sunglasses setting his eyes on fire. Valerie grabbed the wheel from behind and kept them from colliding with other vehicles that honked and swerved. She managed to park the van safely on the side of the road without incident.
“Dad!” John yelled out.
Valerie yanked him into the darkness of the backseat.
“Make it stop! Dear god, make it stop! Let me die! Just let me die!”
“Dad? Dad? Are you okay?” John asked sounding like a child.
“Look at his lips. They’re gray,” Harry said with fascination.
“Clear away. Give him room,” Valerie said. “Charlie, tell me what to do. I don’t know how to make it better.” She could feel his pain and all she wanted to do was take it away. But she only knew sunlight to be fatal. She didn’t know how to heal it, or if it could even be healed.
“Blood. I need blood,” he said through his teeth before screaming again.
“Amelia, the cooler—“
“No! I need blood! Blood!”
“The sun’s still up.” They still had most of the day to wait out.
“Valerie, please. Please.”
“Honey, I will. I promise, as soon as I can.”
“The light, I can still feel it, burning . . .”
She pulled a blanket over his head. “Stay still, honey. Soon, I’ll get you blood soon. I promise.”
“Is Dad going to be okay?” Harry asked.
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to soothe their worried faces. But she didn’t know if Charlie was going to be alright. She didn’t know, and she couldn’t lie.
“Mom, your arms,” Amelia said.
She looked down at her arms. They had been exposed to the sunlight, unprotected, when she reached for the wheel. So had her face. But they were still pale. Alabaster white. They weren’t turning to ash like Charlie’s face. She felt no pain. Mother and daughter just stared at each other in disbelief.
The minutes passed like hours with Charlie moaning then screaming then falling deathly still. Amelia and John silently kept vigil over their father feeling as helpless as Valerie. Harry continuously played with the partition, sticking a finger around the corner to see if his finger would turn to ash. Amelia was the one to notice his game and ripped him away from the blanket. “Sit and don’t move,” she said. He listened.
Valerie may have detested Charlie, but witnessing his agony pained her heart. He may have done horrible things to them, but he did not deserve to be fried alive. No one deserved such a punishment. If she could have taken on the pain herself, she would have. If one of them had to die, she’d rather it be her. Not necessarily for Charlie’s sake, but for her children. If Charlie died, the rest of them would too. They needed Charlie to survive in this strange new world, to help them run and hide from Venjamin. They didn’t need Valerie, at least not in the immediate way they needed their father. She prayed that he would live so they all could live.
When Valerie couldn’t take watching her husband’s suffering any longer, she opened the cooler and took out some meat. She knew he couldn’t eat it, but she could at least drizzle the blood from the package into his mouth. It couldn’t hurt. But when she carefully pulled back the blanket and held the package to his lips, when the blood dripped onto his ashen lips, he screamed. “I said blood!” He slapped the package out of her hand spraying the blood across her face. She was stunned for a moment then carefully covered him back up and wiped her face.
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Night finally came.
“How do we do this?” John asked.
“I don’t want you kids out of the van. You stay here with your father. I’ll take care of it.” She smoothed her hair down and climbed out of the van. Her legs felt jello-y from sitting for so long, her pulse was racing at the prospect of what she had to do. The cool night air felt fresh even with the exhaust of cars. The speed at which they moved frightened her.
I can do this, she told herself. She stepped up to the side of the road, cars whizzing past her so fast they blew her hair back, the sound screeching in her ears. She started waving her arms up and down in distress. Car after car passed her. If she was in Sangre Valley, the very first motorist would have stopped to offer assistance. Finally a car pulled to the side of the road. She prayed it would be someone alone and old, someone already close to death.
It was a middle aged human. He wore khaki shorts that revealed hairy legs and a white polo over a protruding belly. His face was sun burnt, except from where he had been wearing sunglasses, and deeply lined. He smiled at her. “Car trouble?” he asked. “No cell phone?”
She smiled nervously and shook her head. “It-it just stalled.”
“I’m not very good with cars. But I can give it a look. If all else fails, I can let you use my phone or give you a lift to the next exit.”
“That’s very nice of you.” The guilt was already swirling inside her. She couldn’t murder this man. He was a good Samaritan. How could she trade his life for her husband’s?
“You want to pop the hood for me?”
She nodded and opened the car door. Her children’s eyes peaked from behind the blanket. She closed her eyes and pictured the last human she killed, the man she stripped naked in her kitchen. She visualized his hairy chest, his flabby stomach, his flaccid penis. She had scrubbed him top to bottom as if she was abrading a dirty pot. She dressed him as she once had dressed her children when they were small and locked him up in her pantry like . . . some inanimate object. She had done nothing more that night than prepare dinner like she had a hundred times before. This would be no different. Charlie was right. Vampires were on the top of the food chain. God had designed them to be nourished by blood. It would be no different than slaughtering a cow. She popped the hood and came back out.
The Vampiric Housewife Page 11