Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Malory screamed in agony, and del Rio chuckled.

  Crosses, Malory could have dealt with, but this was a five pointed star, the lines over counterclockwise. The symbol had been used by Jews and later by Christians and even Moslems, but it was in fact, much older than that.

  As each seal slammed into place, Malory envisioned uncounted centuries imprisoned in this coffin. Panic took him, followed by rage. As del Rio struck the final blow printing the star on the last blob of wax, Malory remembered his exit hole, sealed only by Holy Water.

  Twisting himself into mist, Malory forced his way through the hole, feeling the lingering resistance like a static field disrupting his nerves. As he formulated in the room, his knees were daytime weak. Light coming through the arches seared his eyes, and his skin crawled even under the factor thirty sunblock.

  But he faced Rita’s killers across the casket, and still managed to use Dave’s hands to trigger the anesthetic gas. It couldn’t touch del Rio in his isolation suit, but it would take out the two killers.

  The instant they saw the billowing fog erupt from the base of the pedestal, they whipped gas masks off their belts and slipped them over their heads. There were crosses on the masks. One of them had a crossbow armed with a silver tipped bolt of rowan wood. The other retreated toward the kitchen, not with panic, but fading slowly back behind his covering partner, probably intent on bringing forth another weapon.

  Behind the mask of the environment suit, del Rio’s face was pale, but carved in wood again. Despite the airtight seals, Malory felt he could smell the man’s fear. His voice, however, was steady as he said, “I came for my notepad. Give it to me, and I won’t bother you again.”

  “You ordered my daughter killed.”

  “She was killing my men. Since she died, I haven’t lost any more. As long as things stay that way, I won’t bother you or your kind again. Just give me my notepad.”

  Upstairs, Silver’s agitation was growing as he bent over the monitor showing the kitchen. The other killer was priming some sort of pump with a hose attached. More Holy Water? Malory ignored him. The crossbow was more dangerous.

  Prepared to twist into mist if the archer fired, the vampire said, “Her death was extremely unpleasant. I won’t make any effort to cushion yours.”

  As he spoke, he carefully withdrew control from Silver and wove his way into the archer’s mind, taking control first of his speech centers, then his hands, and the rest.

  Del Rio replied, “You do realize I’ve got you trapped? You can’t escape from this house.”

  Malory shifted the bowman’s weight and let him pivot slowly, hoping del Rio wouldn’t notice the movement.

  “Listen, Avnel, or whatever you call yourself, just give me back my property, and I’ll let you go.”

  Malory used his proxy hands to fire the crossbow right into del Rio’s throat. Blood spurted. But Malory wasn’t watching. With the preternatural swiftness of his kind, he leaped over the casket and launched himself at the archer. With one hand he wrenched the cross from around the man’s neck. His sharp teeth ripped into the killer’s throat. They hit the carpet, but Malory didn’t feel it.

  Blood spurted from the carotid artery into Malory’s parched mouth, and ecstasy took him. He lost awareness of everything but sucking and swallowing. Warmth flowed into his belly, his limbs came alive, his skin began to feel. Surge after surge of pure power flowed into him, making him ache for more, holding and holding him to his prey.

  He came out of it only when bright flame licked at his eyelids. In reflex, he rolled off his victim, and in one motion was on his feet.

  A sheet of flame cut the room in half while a voice on the other side of the flame cried, “Mr. del Rio! This way!”

  But del Rio was busy bleeding to death.

  CO2 foam flooded down from the ceiling. Malory had felt Silver hit the control a moment before the automatics cut in. Silver would have reacted faster, the vampire realized, but for watching his professed friend in the throes of a feeding frenzy. And Malory was still hungry.

  With the foam damping the flames, he advanced on the man with the flamethrower, his movements fueled by fresh blood, and the promise of more. As he closed, knocking the nozzle out of the way, the flames spewed again, engulfing the archer’s body, sending up a stench of cooking meat. Malory wrenched the flame thrower away and tore the man’s throat out.

  The silver cross singed his skin, but he hardly felt it as fresh, rich blood glided down his throat. The sere rawness at the back of his nose was eased at last by the fumes of blood, fresh, warm, thick, living blood. And there was pure rapture in fulfilling his vow to his god, a relief that the danger of becoming forsworn was over.

  The man was dead when Malory raised his head at last, hazily realizing the house was on fire. That last burst with the flamethrower had flamed the beams above the ceiling. Smoke filled the room despite the layer of foam on the floor, burying del Rio’s white environment suit.

  Malory bent, brushing foam aside. Del Rio was still alive. He ripped the suit fabric, surprised the tough synthetic parted so easily. No, he realized, I’ve regained his strength. He shook the man to awareness to be sure he knew what was happening. Then he sucked the remaining life from him.

  He hadn’t needed it, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

  Only then did his attention turn to Silver. He realized the mortal had gone to the third floor to turn off the attic fan after he’d triggered the CO2. Now he was trapped in a bedroom, stuffing the cracks under the door with rags and newspaper, unable to climb down from the third floor window.

  “Mal!” his thought squealed when Malory made his presence felt. “Get out! Call the fire department!”

  “No. The bodies have to burn completely.” He pulled the crossbow bolt from del Rio’s neck, took up the flame thrower and immolated the three corpses, taking care that the neck tissue charred. There would still be plenty of evidence for the police, but his nature would not be revealed.

  The fire was rapidly sweeping upwards in the building, no doubt setting off smoke detectors in the adjacent houses. With the smoke too thick to see, Malory found a dark closet where, shielded from the sun, he turned to bat form. Keeping well above the flames, he flew up the smoky stairwell.

  He had to get Silver out of the house. But he had no idea how to get him down the stairs. Has to be down the outside—in sunlight. I can do it. He couldn’t face the prospect of losing his new friend now.

  At the third floor, he found Silver’s room, turned to mist and filtered through the rags stuffed under the door. Formulating, he squinted against the terrible sunlight.

  Silver jumped. “Hhhuh! Oh. How did you get up here?”

  “Flew.”

  For the first time, Silver shrank from Malory, and it hurt more than Malory wanted to think about when the mortal asked hesitantly, “You aren’t still hungry, are you?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t matter if I were. You’re safe from me, Dave. You helped me keep an oath I dared not break.” He edged up to the window to get his bearings. Then he sensed it. On the outside of the windowsill, a blob of wax with a five pointed star. It was on top of the god-sign he’d etched there.

  He leaned against the wall, one forearm over his head. He could wait out the fire in his stone sanctuary. When the ashes cooled, the seals that were no doubt on all the doors and windows, even the chimney, would no longer be effective. But he couldn’t get out this window now. So he couldn’t carry Silver out the window and down the wall.

  Silver eyed the door. Smoke was seeping through the rags and around the top. He was still getting most of Malory’s thoughts directly.

  He looked at the windowsill and saw the wax seal. At once, he began to lift the window. Malory stopped him. “Draft will pull the fire into the room.”

  “But way before that, I’ll have that seal off of there and you can get out and maybe get us both down.” The window squealed up and Silver leaned out to scrape the wax off. His arm recoiled as if he’d tou
ched a coal. “Ah! It’s hot!”

  Malory cut the link with Silver. “Try again.”

  Silver got a paint stick from a pile of trash in the corner and leaned out to scrape the wax. The stick flew from his hands, spinning down. “God! What is that thing?”

  “Seal of Solomon. It’s aimed at me, but you’re so tightly involved with me now that it’s got you, too. We can’t erase it because we didn’t set it. And those who did are dead.”

  “I’m going to die in here.”

  “No!” commanded Malory.

  “Promise me, Mal, promise you won’t make me over. If this is death, I accept it. At least we got those bastards.”

  “You’ve had my word on that for years.” He could hear the flames roaring and crackling in the central stairwell. Soon it would be too late for him to go down. Even his mist form couldn’t penetrate open flame.

  Silver began to cough on the smoke drawn into the room by the open window.

  Malory slammed the window and took off his jacket to stuff it under the door, but it wouldn’t fold. The handheld was in the breast pocket. He took it out, weighing it in one hand while he kicked the jacket under the door. It weighed at least ten times what his bat form weighed. Yet he’d transported the thing across the city.

  For all his millennia of sporadic scholarship, he’d never found a clue as to how he did what he did. It had been centuries since he’d discovered a new ability. But it had been centuries since he’d really needed a new skill.

  He tossed the thing from hand to hand.

  “That can’t get us out of this. Go, Mal. Flame can kill you, permanently.”

  He looked at Silver, really looked. He couldn’t remember ever having a friend quite like this one before. He didn’t want to remember for millennia to come that he’d let him die out of sheer cowardice.

  “I’ve got an idea, but it’s dangerous. It might leave you certifiable; it might kill us both, but it might work.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Silver said, but Malory heard the reservation. He’d rather die than let Malory risk death to save him. Fire sirens wailed in the distance.

  “Maybe I can carry you the way I carry my clothes—or small objects like this. I’ve never tried it with a person, before. I just assumed it wouldn’t work. It might not.”

  “I don’t understand. Exactly what would happen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how I do it.” He paced, fretfully. The floor was getting warm. “There’s another place where things wait while what’s left of me here moves. When I get where I’m going, I just turn everything out and reformulate myself. I might not be able to turn you into that place, or maybe I won’t be able to move if I do, or maybe I won’t be able to reformulate you because you’re about equivalent to my own mass. Or I might even find I can’t reformulate myself. I don’t know how it works!”

  “I don’t like it.” Malory knew he was about to reject the idea totally, to accept death, when a gout of flame shot up from the corner of the room closest to the living room.

  Silver jumped, moving toward Malory, and the vampire stepped into and around the mortal, scooping him up in his arms and completing his turn into mist.

  It seemed to take forever and ever. Very gradually, he became dimly conscious of his focal point in the mist, and the vast drag of Silver’s panic somewhere else.

  He hovered in the midst of the burning room, struggling with Silver’s panic, groping for his mind. At last, he found the mortal consciousness and wrestled it down to darkness.

  Then he could move. Laboriously, he slipped through the crack at the top of the door. The hall was aflame. He could, however, manage to ride the cool currents, for as the warmed air from the fire rose, the colder air from the top of the house literally poured down the stairs.

  The trip was a nightmare, dodging, rising, falling out of control, being inexorably pushed this way and that. It was like staggering under a massive load, careening out of control in a hurricane wind.

  Toward the end, Malory knew he had failed and was about to die a final death, his mist form evaporated by tongues of flame. On the ground floor, he barely avoided catastrophe for the fifth time, and raged inwardly. Here he was trying to save the mortal life of one of the best of Abram’s descendants, and the Creator of the Universe couldn’t spare a flicker of mercy for the guy. So I’m glad I didn’t accept Your offer if this is how you’d have treated my descendants! And he swore in several extinct languages.

  With one last spiteful effort, he filtered into his rocky sanctuary. Still mist, he rested, feeling scorched and weak enough to weep. What if I can’t do it?

  Listen, prayed the vampire in his mother tongue, I’m sorry for what I said. There are a whole lot more descendants of Abram now than there were total humans alive in his own time. You’ve made a good start on your promise. But don’t you think maybe Dave here could help increase that number, with just a bit of your help now?

  For a long time, the vampire rested, gathering strength for the turn that would restore Silver’s body, if not maybe his mind. Then, with the last dregs of his strength, he heaved them both around that indescribable corner.

  “Mal!” screamed Silver in terror at the pitch darkness.

  Malory rolled over to drag one infinitely heavy arm across Silver’s chest. “Relax, we’re in my sanctuary. It’s solid rock, remember? The fire can’t get us here.”

  “It worked? It worked! My God!”

  “Yes. Your God. Definitely the more powerful.” I think. Once he knew Silver had survived physically and mentally, Malory’s thoughts unraveled under the powerful daytime lethargy. “I’ll wake at sundown, then we’ll leave. Sleep, Dave, you’ve earned it.”

  TRUE DEATH

  “Chelsea won that lawsuit!”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “The one to keep Saint Germain.”

  David Silver waved the hardcover book he was reading. “This is a new one!”

  Malory Avnel had come to relish Silver’s cryptic greetings in the months since the mob had destroyed his house in San Francisco. But dawn was approaching, and Malory’s patience was thin.

  Gently, he closed the window he’d just flown through. Silver had thoughtfully left the window open to save him the trouble of reformulating as mist and sifting through the cracks. He flicked the air on, then strode across the apartment’s neutral-toned Ethan Alan living room to the white and gold painted mantel that concealed his own door, replying absently, “I’m glad he won his lawsuit, but I thought church and state were separate.”

  “She. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Saint Germain is a fictional vampire based on the real historical Saint Germain. But he wasn’t a saint. That’s just his name.”

  The word vampire caught Malory’s attention. Silver was stretched out in his recliner. His book had a glossy indigo cover and red lettering. Better in the Dark.

  Silver looked up, scrutinizing Malory. “Okay, so Saint Germain wasn’t really a vampire and you could pick holes in the historical depictions because you were there while she only researched it. That’s not the point. I wanted to see what it feels like to live through so many millennia; how human behavior never changes, which makes boredom the biggest threat to the will to—what’s wrong, Mal?”

  “I’ve had a hard night. I came in thinking I could use some lackluster routine for a change. And I find you so excited about boredom that you’ve stayed up all night reading about it.”

  Silver looked at his book as if he’d never seen it before. “But it’s a love sto—” Silver broke off and set the book on the lamp stand. He pushed up out of the recliner. Coming toward Malory with one hand out, he said, “I just read this stuff for fun. If it bothers you—”

  “I enjoy your fun; I enjoy your sharing your fun with me, even when it involves fictional vampires. I wish I had something equally pleasurable to share with you.” He intercepted Silver’s hand before it landed on his shoulder.

  “Ah,” said Silver. “You don’t want to talk about what’s bothering y
ou.” Silver’s grip on Malory’s hand and conveyed acceptance of that reluctance.

  “Tonight will be soon enough.” Malory returned the grip and dropped the warm, human hand.

  “Then there is something bothering you.”

  “Yes!” Malory snapped. “It’s almost dawn.” He triggered the hidden mechanism. As the panel swung inward, he sighed. “Sorry. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Silver opened his mouth for another delaying comment, but the fax machine bleeped. “I’ll get that. Sleep well.”

  Silver turned toward the bedroom they used for an office and Malory stepped into the anteroom of his sleeping chamber. “I will.” He triggered the panel shut, leaving him in cool darkness. The inner door, which would shield him from sunlight should anyone open the outer door during the day, swung silently at a touch. Air conditioning kept it dry enough in this windowless chamber to prevent mold.

  When they had arrived in Miami, they had moved into this manager’s suite of this apartment building. The entire lower floor of this upscale building had been built by one of Malory’s aliases and was now owned by another. The suite had been constructed around the fire-proof retreat Malory required. Silver’s rooms surrounded that protected core. For months now, Silver had managed both the apartment building and Malory’s daytime affairs with growing confidence.

  Watching the little tailor blossom into a computer nerd and Mutual Fund Maven via GEnie and E-mail had restored Malory’s zest for life. But the human’s recent choice in reading matter was worrisome.

  As the vampire disrobed and settled in his curtained bed, he regretted his promise to stay out of Silver’s mind. The mortal had surely earned his privacy with his assistance against the killers of Malory’s youngest “daughter,” Rita. But it would have been reassuring to know what was going on in Silver’s mind.

  He surrendered to the rising sun, bemused by the collage of fragmented memories swirling through his thoughts. From San Francisco, they had driven across country in a van equipped for Malory’s daytime requirements. As Silver recovered from the shock of his first close encounter with the darker side of magic and the supernatural, the mortal had begun to edit his world view. Many night drives were punctuated with whirlwind conversations about religion, magic, and the difference between magic and the supernatural creatures such as Malory.