“‘What have you done?’ asked my father.
“‘I was there when Jesus was arrested. Simon Peter cut my ear off in the fight, and Jesus healed me. Then, at the temple, I slapped him.’
“My mother gasped at this. She was a believer. That night we were all believers, but she had been a believer for years. She had been there at his Sermon on the Mount. It had changed her and my sisters. I had never paid him much attention, just a crazy preacher who went from town to town thinking he was the son of God. But that night, I believed.
“‘Now God has cursed me!’ cried Malchus.
“‘How do you know he has cursed you?’ I asked.
“‘Because the angel Gabriel came to me in my bedchambers and said, ‘For what you have done, for betraying the one who showed you compassion, you shall be condemned to wander the earth until his return, with a hunger that can never be satisfied, not with meat from beast, nor grain from the fields, nor fruit from the tree. The sun will bring you no joy, the night shall be your dominion, the blood of your fellow man your nourishment. You, Malchus, son of Michael, are hereby condemned.’ Then he disappeared, and I felt this terrible hunger grow inside me. Right now it is everything I can do to control it, but I don’t know how much longer I can!’
“To me it made no sense. What did it mean? The blood of his fellow man? Was that literal, or figurative? Could Gabriel have really meant that Malchus was condemned to eat blood for the rest of eternity?”
“To my horror, my question was answered, for I reached over to put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, when he growled and sunk his teeth into my arm. I screamed in pain, and my family began hitting Malchus, punching him, kicking him, trying to pull my arm away, but he had such a grip, on the bone itself, that he wouldn’t let go.
“My father grabbed his staff, and hit Malchus as hard as he could over the head, and his grip was broken. I tore my arm away, leaving a chunk of my flesh in my best friend’s mouth, and scurried away, holding my arm. My father continued to hit Malchus with the staff, but he reached up and caught it in his hand. It would have shattered the bones of any other man, but not Malchus, not now. He rose, glaring at my father, and yanked the staff away from him and threw it across the room. He shoved my father against the wall and sank his teeth into my father’s throat. I jumped up, grabbing the staff, and swung it as hard as I could, breaking it across Malchus’ back.
“But he didn’t stop. It was then that I felt a strange feeling in my stomach, a hunger that kept growing, as if I had been lost in the desert for days with nothing to eat. It was overwhelming. I stumbled back, leaving Malchus to feed on my own father, gripping my stomach, trying to fight the ravenous hunger eating me from the inside. I could only watch as Malchus tossed my father aside, and grabbed my little brother, tearing out his throat, blood everywhere.
“‘Run!’ I yelled at my mother and sisters, huddled in the far corner. My mother looked at me, and I could tell she knew it was happening to me too. ‘Run!’ I screamed at her. She grabbed my sisters and fled through the front door, into the street, screaming for help.
“But none came. Everyone was too afraid. The screams, the growls, the snarls, filled the house and echoed through the empty streets. And it terrified everyone. It was the wrath of God, and there was no stopping it. No mortal dared try.
“Except for my poor brothers, who tried desperately to fend off Malchus and free our other brother from his death grip. But it was no use. I pleaded with them to run, but they wouldn’t, they were no cowards. They fought valiantly, using every manner of weapon they could find, but it was no use. One was killed when he was tossed across the room, his neck broken, and the other was fed upon.
“When Malchus was finished, he stumbled over to me, his face covered in blood, his robes, soaked through. He glared down at me, his eyes red in the candle light, but did nothing. It was as if he recognized in me what he had become. He slowly calmed, then looked about him, and cried. He looked back at me, the fire gone, his shoulders slumped, and sobbed, his apologies useless.
“I screamed at him to leave, and he nodded, but at the doorway he stopped, looking back at me. ‘Soon you will understand why,’ he said. And I knew what he meant. The hunger was overwhelming. I could barely see, I could barely think. I doubled over in pain, and found my face on the floor, next to a pool of my own father’s blood.
“And the smell was intoxicating. The tiny part of me that was still human screamed in disgust, but I found myself lapping at it like the animal I had become, and it gave me strength. I realized it wasn’t enough, these leftovers on the floor, and I looked at my dead brother, his neck broken, in the corner. I jumped at his corpse, and fed my hunger, and fueled my shame. When I was done, there was no one else to feed on, but I had had enough to control my hunger for the moment.
“It was then that the full impact of what had happened hit me. My father, my brothers. All dead. Even I having fed off one of them. My shame was so great, I immediately took my bedroll and a few belongings, and left. I headed north, away from the lands I knew, and never went back. The hunger was so great, I was forced to feed along the way, and as I was the second of our kind, I had to learn on my own what we all now know. That if you feed until your victim is dead, they remain dead, but if you leave just a little life in them, they will become one of us, as had happened to me.
“God’s curse was complete. Not only was Malchus punished, but so was his fellow man, exponentially over the millennia.” He looked at me for the first time in minutes, his eyes red, not with the bloodlust, but with emotion. “Now you know who you are, where you came from. We are God’s vengeance for the death of His son, damned to wander this earth until the second coming.” He sighed. “And then we will be damned for eternity for what we have done.”
My mind raced as I processed everything he had just told me. It was an incredible story, and it made sense. In my own encounters over the years, everything had led back to the time of Jesus, to ancient Judea. And why would Lazarus make it up? There was no benefit that I could see to lie.
But why was he telling me this?
He seemed to be trying to be nice. To be helpful.
And that was not the Lazarus I knew, not the Lazarus I had been obsessing over for more than two centuries.
And it was not the Lazarus I planned to kill at the first opportunity.
“Why are you telling me this?”
He frowned, then sighed. “I felt you deserved to know. After all, I was the one who turned you, who fed on your wife. And for that I’m sorry.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m a changed man. I wandered for almost two thousand years, feeding, creating others like me, keeping a few with me for company, for entertainment, and then about seventy years ago, I bumped into him.”
“Who?”
“The Wandering Jew of legend.”
“The Wandering Jew?” I had of course heard of him, a man of legend who was immortal, wandering from town to town in ancient Europe, but he was considered a myth. But then again, the story told here tonight, had me second guessing everything.
“Malchus.”
My jaw dropped. It all made sense. He was Jewish, he would have been shunned wherever he went, and with his urges, he couldn’t stay in any one place for long.
“What happened?”
“Everything. Nothing. He was the same old Malchus I remembered. Friendly, fun loving, but also sad, brooding, lonely. He was delighted to see me, but I wasn’t. I wanted to tear his throat out, to feed upon the first of us, to take my revenge for the death of the male side of my family. For cursing all of us.” Lazarus sucked in a deep breath, as he relived the emotions. “But you know what he told me?”
I shook my head.
“He said, ‘After that night, I never fed again.’ Can you believe that? He said after feeding on my family, he had calmed down, realized the horror of what he had done, and fed only on animals from that moment on.”
“You mean—”
“That I, not Malchus, am the cause of all of this. Of the vampire scourge that has cursed this land for almost two thousand years. It was I who couldn’t control myself, who continued to feed, who turned others, who turned yet more. It was I, not Malchus, who was weak, and who is responsible. Malchus turned only one, in the frenzy of the moment, not knowing what the implications were. But I, I fed, I turned, I terrorized, knowing full well what I was doing.
“And since that realization, I have never fed.”
I stared at him, not sure what to believe. If he were telling the truth, that he was a changed man, that he no longer fed, did it excuse what he had done? Did it pardon him for his past sins? Did it mean I should be obligated to forgive him for the death of my wife?
No!
“I’m happy to hear you’ve changed, but you must pay for your past sins.” I raised my sword. Immediately his companions closed in on me. I charged at Lazarus, but one of my opponents jumped between us. I dropped the blade of my sword. Hard. Fast. It cleaved his head in two and he fell to the ground. I leapt over the body, closing the final few feet between myself and Lazarus, who remained, arms folded, impassive, simply shaking his head.
I raised my sword over my head again, diving through the air, now committed to whatever may happen, breaking the cardinal rule of taking your feet off the ground in combat when your opponent was fully aware of what you were doing.
He jumped.
Not at me, but up and backward, arcing head over heels, landing nicely on the other side of the car. I slammed into the side of the car, and was immediately buried under a mountain of snarling flesh, biting, tearing, ripping at my skin. I could feel teeth sinking into me, wherever they could get a hold.
This was the end.
I heard one of them cry out. Then another. I distinctly felt the last one’s grip on me disappear. Not remove itself. Not withdraw. There was no feeling of teeth pulling from my skin. It just disappeared, as if they had never been there.
Then another.
The others realized something was happening, and this time I did feel the teeth withdrawing from my flesh. I was free, but they had done their damage. I was weak. Too weak to move.
I looked up, and saw the horde, slightly thinner now, staring into the darkness. One of them burst into dust.
I heard the car engine roar to life, then the spinning of tires as it roared away.
And I knew Lazarus was gone.
A figure walked out of the darkness, and I smiled as the world went dark around me.
SEVEN
Once again I was saving his ass. He always insisted on going on these things alone, always saying it was too dangerous. But here I was, secretly providing backup. But this time there’d be no hiding it. I had always managed to take someone out without him knowing. Like in Detroit. Tarkan wasn’t alone. He had a friend outside the factory, but I had taken him out. And Zee was none the wiser.
But tonight the moron had gone and taken on a dozen.
What was he thinking?
He wasn’t. That’s the problem. He just charges in, like a hero, not realizing even Superman got his ass kicked from time to time. Argh! He was so frustrating at times. I can just imagine what my mother must have gone through with him, working side by side for over twenty years.
I had known Zander since I was a little girl, my mother sometimes taking me to the office. Playing under her desk, listening to the conversations, understanding little. But at the age of five my mother had enrolled me in Karate. I was a black belt by ten, and was now a third degree. But that wasn’t all she had enrolled me in. Every manner of self-defense and weapons training. Yes, I had learned how to dismantle and reassemble every type of gun out there, to shoot with incredible accuracy, but that wasn’t all. Archery and swordsmanship were two of her favorites she insisted I learn. I never knew why, but I excelled at it, and she would practice with me, teaching me her own tricks, tricks I later learned had been taught to her by my grandmother.
We were a family of kickass chicks, and the first boy who had tried to get fresh with me was probably still nursing a sore neck and shoulder from when I flipped him over my back and onto the floor of his bedroom.
Friends, sure. Friends with benefits? I don’t think so. I have some self-respect. Life isn’t a damned rap video, loser.
I raised the Equalizer again, 'Equalizer' the nickname my mother had given to the weapon I had just used to remove a few of those freaks from existence. It was an air gun, modified to fire wooden stakes. The compressed air used to fire the stake was strong enough to propel it through the air rapidly and surprise most of your everyday vampires, but also gentle enough to not simply shatter the damned thing inside the tube. You could top load six stakes in the Equalizer, and I always carried a few extra sets with me.
Another one of those bloodsucking bastards blew to dust.
I counted seven left. Zander was still on the ground. But he was still alive. Still moving.
The one I assumed was Lazarus had escaped like the coward he was in his car, leaving his friends behind to deal with their unknown attacker—me. I squeezed again, another one buying it.
I reloaded.
They kept advancing toward me, and with six left, and a fresh clip of six lovely “Stakes of Doom” as I liked to call them (my mom always winced at that), I raised the weapon to my shoulder, took aim at the biatch on the left, and squeezed the trigger. I moved to the right slightly and squeezed again, just as my first target bit it. I kept firing, taking out the next one, when the remaining three scattered.
To the wind as it turned out.
They knew when they were owned.
I raised the barrel to my lips and blew the imaginary smoke away, across the top of the opening.
Sydney Winter, Vampire Slayer.
I checked out the area, keeping a wary eye on the rooftops. I’ve seen these SOBs jump from fifty feet without batting an eyelash. And they never played fair. I approached Zander.
“Zee, it’s me, Sydney. Are you okay?”
He looked at me, and I could tell he was weak. His shoulders sagged, he was even more pale than usual, the street light almost directly overhead revealing at least half a dozen bite marks, and several large pools of already congealed blood on the road. He was nearly dead.
And dangerous.
I remembered what my mother had said. “Never approach a vampire when he appears weak. He knows his only escape from the pain he is in is to feed, and during the bloodlust, he has no control.”
Even though I trusted Zander with my life, what lay before me was no longer Zander. I shrugged my Jansport backpack off and dropped it to the ground. I knelt and unzipped it, pulling out a large blood bag. I sliced open the top with the knife I kept on my belt, and tossed the bag near Zander’s head.
He sniffed, the scent irresistible to him.
Incredibly dangerous.
He reached out with a shaking hand, gripping the bag, and pulled it toward his mouth. He bit into it, his hand squeezing the bag, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he slowly drained the life giving liquid from the bag. As he neared the end I tossed another one over. This time the hand that grabbed it didn’t shake. It just grabbed the bag, shoving the PVC into its master’s mouth.
This one was drained faster.
I tossed a third bag over. The color was returning to his cheeks. That healthy white glow as I called it. But the bloodlust was still in his eyes. He sat upright now, sucking on the bag, glaring at me, his eyes red.
I kept the Equalizer pointed at him the entire time. There was no way in hell I was dying today. But I also didn’t want to kill him. I had been lectured by my mother, and by him, that if it came down to the two of us, always choose yourself. Never die from some false sense of morality. Morals didn’t apply when it came down to choosing between whether a human lived or a vampire.
I tossed him a fourth bag.
H
e must have really been drained. Normally his weekly feeding only needed two bags from the blood bank. But this was the first time I had ever seen him attacked. In fact, I wondered if he had ever been attacked before.
I made a mental note to ask him when this was all over.
I tossed a fifth bag.
And realized, with a bit of anxiety, that I had only one bag left.
He sucked back the fifth bag.
And the bloodlust remained.
Not good! I tossed the sixth and final bag, then stood up, shouldering the backpack. He finished the final bag and tossed it aside, rising to his feet, all the while not taking his eyes off me, the red still glowering at me. He took a step toward me, the ultimate bag of blood.
I raised the Equalizer, and shook my head.
“We’ll have none of that now. Take a deep breath, calm down, and remember who you are, and who I am. Remember my voice. It’s me, Sydney. Remember my mother. My grandmother. I’m your friend. You’re my friend.”
He stepped closer. I took a step back, raising the Equalizer to my shoulder, taking aim at his heart.
Mine broke a little inside.
“Please, Zee. Don’t make me do this!”
He stepped forward again.
My finger left the trigger guard, and rested on the trigger. Tears filled my eyes as I realized what I was about to do. I knew my mother had loved him, even though she was married to my father, who I knew she loved as well. I was sure nothing had ever happened between them, but I knew it would kill her if her own daughter was forced to kill the man she had grown up with, and loved.
And it would kill me too.
Zander was someone that had been in my life for as long as I remembered. Someone who I had looked up to, who had been a curiosity, who had fueled my pubescent fantasies, who still starred in too many of my dreams, dreams I always woke up from in a sweat, my heart hammering against my chest.
Turned (Zander Vargar Vampire Detective, Book #1) Page 6