Immortal Blood

by James M. Thompson

  Ed leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips, and then he stood up and went to his closet. “I’m going to go and try and help Elijah. He was good enough to try and help us even though he knew he was probably going to die.” He pulled a ten-gauge shotgun out of the closet along with a twelve-inch K-Bar assault knife. As he strapped the knife on, he looked over at her. “I’m not going to let a good man like that die without a fight. I’m going to help him.”

  Kim laughed and jumped out of bed, throwing her nightgown off. “Not without me, you’re not!”

  She stood there naked before him, her breasts heaving, and a flush on her face. He smiled at her, loving her more at that moment than he ever thought possible. “Are you sure?”

  “Goddamned right, ay?”

  Forty-six

  Once they were all dressed in their snowsuits and had their weapons ready, Pike gave final instructions. “Matt, you and Shooter take up stations near the front and back doors. You can ease back under the porch where you can’t be seen and just blast the hell out of anyone who comes close. Remember, aim for the head and, if your target goes down and no one else is in sight, rush over and take the head with your sword.”

  Matt and Shooter nodded, faces grim, eyes bright with the adrenaline rush of incipient combat.

  “TJ and Sam, you come with me. Once outside, we’ll change into our vampyre forms and hide among the trees, but be careful to stay out of range of the explosive charges and stay well hidden in the bushes, ’cause when the lights come on, it’s gonna be as bright as daylight out there.”

  He looked around at the group and smiled grimly. “I guess I don’t have to tell you to strike fast and hard and to give no mercy, because they sure as hell won’t give us a second chance.”

  With that, he and the girls melted out into the falling snow and disappeared. Matt stuck out his hand to Shooter, wondering if either of them would survive this night. “Take care, pal,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Shooter grabbed his hand and nodded. “You know it, podnah!”

  * * *

  Ashby slowed his car and brought it to a stop one hundred yards down the road from the entrance to Pike’s cabin. He got out and waited as the others joined him.

  Morpheus said, “They probably won’t be expecting us”—which brought a knowing smile to Theo Thantos’s lips—“but just in case, go in fast and hard and take them out!” He hesitated, and then he added through clenched teeth, “And if it’s possible, save the red-headed one for me. I have a special treat in store for her and I don’t want her to die too easily.”

  As they began to move up the road, each of the creatures changed into their vampyre forms, clutching swords, axes, and guns in claws as they loped through the darkness in knee-deep snow.

  Theo put his hand on Christina’s arm and slowed her down so that they were bringing up the rear of the column of vampyres when they reached the road to the cabin. The log structure was barely visible up ahead through the falling snow, and they could all clearly smell the odor of the wood fire going inside.

  Morpheus, confident of the element of surprise, took the driveway, Marya at his side, and waved the others into the dense forest that led up to the cabin.

  Gerald Enyo and Louis Frene circled off to the left and jumped over a dry creek bed as they crouched low and sloshed through the snow. They’d moved only thirty yards when a bright light came on in a tree just ahead of them, blinding them with its glare.

  “What the hell?” Enyo said, taking another step forward and tripping the black wire strung between two trees. A tremendous explosion from five feet in front of him sent a huge cloud of smoke and dirt into the air, along with four hundred nails.

  The nails blew Enyo and Frene off their feet, shredding and flaying their skin and tearing their arms and legs to ribbons.

  Enyo screamed in agony and rolled over, staring up through the one eye left to him at a horrible apparition of a female vampyre, dressed all in white, snarling at him through dripping fangs as she raised a sword in her hands and swung it down at him like a baseball bat. Enyo put up a bloody, broken arm to fend off the blow, but the razor-sharp katana sliced through the arm and then his neck like a hot knife through butter. Enyo’s head catapulted through the air, staring back down at his ruined body lying shattered and bloody in the snow—it was the last thing he saw before he died.

  Louis Frene, who took the brunt of the explosion and most of the nails, couldn’t see anything as he opened his mouth and screamed for help, for both of his eyes were ripped from his skull by the force of the explosion. He didn’t even see the blade of TJ’s katana as it whistled through the air and tore his head off clean at the neck. He was dead before his screams quit echoing through the forest.

  Jean Horla and Peter Vardalack, walking next to each other in the deep woods, jumped and stared as lights began to come on all around them and Frene’s and Enyo’s screams came on the heels of a tremendous explosion off to their left.

  “What the fuck was that?” Horla asked, just as a white demon appeared between them, a sliver blade flashing in the light as it was swung it at Horla’s head. Horla ducked and managed to get his own blade up in time to partially deflect the blow, causing it to glance off and embed itself in his left shoulder down to the bone.

  “Peter,” he screamed, “help!”

  Peter Vardalack took one look into the demon’s red-rimmed, hate-filled eyes and he dropped his sword and began to sprint for the cabin just ahead, thinking if he could just make it to the door and inside he might be safe.

  Horla swung his sword one-handed at Pike, who couldn’t seem to get his machete loose. Pike stuck his left arm up and caught the sword on it, wincing at the sound of the bones in the arm breaking and the lightning jolt of white-hot pain it sent up into his shoulder.

  Pike let go of his machete and grabbed a handful of Horla’s hair in his right hand, jerking backward to bring his chin up and expose his neck.

  He leaned forward and ripped Horla’s throat out with his fangs, jerking his head from side to side like a dog worrying a bone. Finally, the vertebrae in the neck gave way with a crunching sound and the head came loose in his hand, the body crumpling to the ground with his sword still embedded in the shoulder.

  Vardalack made it to within fifteen yards of the cabin, running and looking back over his shoulder. From in front of him there came a loud double-explosion, and he felt as if he’d been kicked in the head by a mule. The force of the twin loads of 00-buckshot took the top of his head off along with the left half of his face and one ear. His body hit the snow and flopped like a fish, his screams of pain and fear sounding only as gurgles through his shattered mouth and throat.

  He reached up and wiped the blood and tissue from his good eye just in time to see a Normal bending over him, a grimace of distaste on his face.

  “Please,” Vardalack groaned through shattered teeth. “Help me.”

  “I’ll help you straight to hell, you bastard!” Shooter said, holding bloody hair in one hand while with the other he sliced through the neck of the monster in front of him.

  Vardalack died without his customary grin, for he had no lips to smile with.

  As the explosions and bright lights and screams pierced the night, Theo Thantos and Christina Alario slowed even more, letting Morpheus and Marya and John Ashby pull ahead of them on the road to the cabin.

  He put his hand on her arm. “I think from the sound of things, we ought to get the hell out of here.”

  She snarled and bared her fangs as the smell of burning flesh and fresh blood wafted toward them on the night breeze, making her own blood boil and her mouth water. “As much as I hate to leave a good fight, I think you’re right,” she growled.

  They turned and ran back down the road toward their car as fast as they could, still holding hands.

  As Morpheus and Marya neared the cabin, with John Ashby a few steps behind, a Normal man in a white suit stepped out of the darkness, a shotgun cradled in his arms.
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  “Morpheus, you sick bastard!” Matt yelled at him, recognizing the man who’d tried to take Sam from him.

  Morpheus grinned and crouched, his sword swinging in his right hand. “You fool,” he snarled, moving toward Matt and bringing the sword up while Marya circled to the other side, “don’t you know guns can’t kill us!”

  “No,” Matt said though clenched teeth as he brought the barrel of the shotgun up, “but they can certainly fuck up your entire night!”

  Morpheus rushed him, standing up straight just as Matt fired so the buckshot took him in the chest and arm instead of the head, blowing the sword out of his hand and stopping him in his tracks.

  Morpheus staggered under the blow and twisted to the side. He glanced down at the gaping hole in his chest and the mangled claws on his right arm and he screamed in fury. He bared his fangs and sprinted forward, ignoring the burning agony in his chest until he was right in front of Matt. He swung his left hand, claws extended, with all his might and swiped Matt across the chest and shoulder, laying him open and knocking him to the ground.

  “Now you die, you fucking Normal!” Morpheus growled, baring his fangs and leaning over a helpless Matt.

  “No-o-o!” screamed Sam, racing out of the woods next to the road and leaping onto Morpheus’s back, tearing at his eyes and face with her claws before he could get to Matt.

  Marya snarled and raised her sword, looking for an opening to take Sam’s head off, when Pike ran out of the darkness, his right arm hanging bent and useless, his machete in his left hand.

  As Marya saw her chance, she swung at Sam’s exposed neck, but Pike parried the blow with his weaker left hand. Marya’s sword knocked Pike’s lighter machete from his grip, and she jerked her sword back and slashed him across his left arm, cutting it to the bone.

  He grunted in pain and stepped between her and Sam, snarling and baring his fangs in defiance with both his bloodied arms hanging useless at his side, defenseless against her. She grinned and slashed sideways with her sword, cutting the tendons to his right leg, causing him to topple to the ground next to Matt.

  She screamed in fury and raised the sword just as a gunshot rang out, the buckshot catching her in the back and blowing her forward onto her knees.

  Ed Slonaker ran up the road, his still-smoking shotgun in one hand, and his K-Bar assault knife in the other. As he ran toward her, knife extended, she lashed out backhanded with her sword and caught Ed in the thighs just above his knees, knocking him to the ground.

  Marya climbed slowly to her feet, blood pouring from dozens of wounds in her back and again raised her sword, this time aiming at Ed.

  Kim Slonaker, a few yards behind Ed, dove headlong into Marya’s body, both of them rolling over several times until Marya came up on top, her sword point at Kim’s neck, her fangs dripping red drool as she snarled and growled.

  John Ashby, who’d stood by, transfixed by the drama until now, stepped quickly forward and grabbed Marya’s wrist, stilling her deathblow to Kim. “Marya, that’s enough!” he growled, pulling her to her feet.

  “But . . .” she yelled, rage filling her eyes.

  “I said,” John said firmly, “there’s been enough killing tonight. Let it go!”

  Marya glared at him for a moment, her fondness for him warring with the bloodlust in her veins, until finally she dropped her sword and put her arms around his neck, collapsing into his arms, feeling for the first time the pain in her back.

  John looked over her shoulder at Kim and Ed lying next to each other and smiled. “That was for old times’ sake, and for friendship,” he said, picking Marya up in his arms and loping down the road out of sight.

  Sam and Morpheus continued their death struggle, rolling around in the snow among the bodies lying on all sides of them. Their claws were locked on each other’s throats, their fangs snapping and biting and tearing at their flesh, seeking a killing wound.

  Morpheus, weakened by the gunshot wound to his chest, jerked his head forward and snapped, his fangs tearing a deep chunk of flesh from Sam’s right cheek. She howled in pain and brought her right knee up as hard as she could between Morpheus’s legs. Morpheus screamed in agony and doubled over, letting go of Sam’s neck with one hand as he grabbed his crushed genitals.

  That was all the opening Sam needed; she dipped her head and turned it sideways and sank her fangs as deep as they would go in Morpheus’s neck, screaming with anger as she ripped out his trachea and esophagus and tore the major arteries to his brain in two.

  As he crumpled to his knees and stared up at her, his eyes beseeching her to let him live while he tried to stem the pulsating jets of blood from his neck, Sam calmly reached behind her, picked up the sword Marya had dropped, and in one lightning blow cut his head off.

  Without another look, she dropped the sword and turned and ran to take Matt’s bleeding body in her arms, pressing on the gashes in his skin to stop their bleeding, telling him over and over how much she loved him and that she’d never forgive him if he died.

  * * *

  The next morning, Shooter and TJ, who were the only ones of the group who’d escaped uninjured, saw to the wounded.

  Ed and Kim shared Shooter and TJ’s bed, waiting patiently for their wounds to heal so they could go back to their own home.

  Matt was wrapped from neck to navel with bandages covering the two hundred fifty-three stitches TJ had used to close his wounds. Sam lay next to him, worrying over him like a mother hen, the bite marks and cuts and gouges Morpheus had inflicted on her already almost healed.

  Pike was wrapped in blankets on one of the couches in the living room, his leg propped up and both his arms in splints, cursing at the time it was taking him to heal and blaming it on the low-octane blood-bank blood he was drinking.

  TJ and Shooter went into their bedroom to talk to Ed and Kim. “Thank you both for coming last night,” TJ said. “If it hadn’t been for your bravery, Matt and Elijah and Sam would all be dead.”

  Ed blushed and stammered and tried to say it was nothing, but Kim just looked up at her and said, “You’re welcome, but it is we who should thank you for helping to give us our lives back with your vaccine.”

  TJ turned to Shooter, who had a metal suitcase in his hands. “You want me do it?” he asked TJ, who merely nodded.

  He put the suitcase next to the bed. “This is enough of the vaccine treatment for each of you for six months,” he said. “TJ put it together along with directions on how to take it.”

  Kim leaned over and ran her hands along the smooth metal, her eyes shinning bright with unshed tears. “Oh, thank you,” she said.

  “And, when you’re well enough to head home, Elijah will give you the address where we can be reached when you need a refill,” TJ said.

  “Oh, then you’re not staying here?” Ed asked.

  “No,” TJ answered. “Elijah has a place in Maine that he thinks we ought to go to. He feels we may have worn out our welcome here in Canada.”

  “That’s a shame,” Ed said, “it’s going to get awfully boring up here without you to liven things up.”

  Kim winked at TJ and poked Ed sharply in the ribs, making him grunt in pain. “Did I hear you say living up here with me was going to be boring?”

  Ed stuttered, “Uh, no dear, you know that’s not . . .”

  “You haven’t seen the day I can’t liven you up, you big old bear, ay?” she said, hugging him and laying her head on his shoulder.

  Forty-seven

  Sam and TJ left the airport in Houston and drove their rental car directly to Shelly and Barbara Silver’s house. They’d called the couple earlier at Barbara’s sister’s house and asked them to meet them there.

  Among many hugs and tears, they told Shelly and Barbara that any danger to them had been taken care of and explained why they would not be returning to Houston to pick up their lives. They told them that they and the boys were moving to Maine, to work full time with Elijah to perfect a vaccine so vampyres would have a choice—how
eventually any of their race who wanted to would be able to live their lives without resorting to killing to survive.

  Shelly hugged them both, got their assurances that this was what they truly wanted, and wished them godspeed, warning them with a severe look on his face that they’d better keep in touch.

  After they left the Silvers, TJ dropped Sam off at their apartment so she could arrange to have their stuff either stored or shipped to Maine. Matt and Shooter’s things were being taken care of by Matt’s father, and both he and Shooter had already resigned their jobs over the phone.

  “You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Sam said as TJ let her out in front of their apartment.

  TJ glanced at her watch. “Yeah, the lawyers and the prick plaintiff are waiting for me at his lawyer’s office right now.” She grinned wickedly. “I’m sure this won’t take long,” she said and pulled away with a screeching of tires.

  * * *

  TJ walked into the lawyer’s office and approached the secretary at the front desk. “Hello, I’m TJ O’Reilly.”

  The secretary consulted a logbook and looked up with a bright, false smile on her face. “Yes, Doctor O’Reilly. They’re waiting for you in the conference room at the end of the hall.”

  TJ walked into the room with her head held high and a half-smile on her face. It was a typical lawyer’s conference room, lined with thousands of infrequently read books, thick carpets and dark, highly polished wood.

  The plaintiff who was suing her for malpractice and his slimy lawyer were sitting on one side of the table, smug looks on their faces. The bastard plaintiff had his right arm in a sling, even though TJ’s lawyer had informed her he’d played eighteen holes of golf the previous day.

  The lawyer TJ’s insurance company had assigned to take care of her was on the other side of the table and he didn’t appear to be too happy to be here.

  He jumped to his feet and approached her, saying in a low voice, “Dr. O’Reilly, I must tell you again I don’t think this is a wise decision.”