Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  The view descended to reveal detail, traffic and people.

  NO! cried Silver silently and twisted in Malory’s mental grasp.

  The image shattered and the bits whirled away into fathomless blackness. Dizzy, disoriented, operating on the sheer momentum of intent, Malory reformulated their solid bodies inside their apartment living room.

  The two of them tumbled into a heap of arms and legs, Malory fetching up against the sofa and Silver draped across the stacks of magazines on the coffee table. The slippery stack oozed sideways carrying Silver’s limp body to the floor.

  “No, Mal, no! Don’t—”

  Silver rolled to his side on the floor at Malory’s feet, hands clutched to his head. “Stop! Don’t! No!”

  On Silver’s temples, Malory now saw angry red welts in the shape of a hand, tapered, clawed fingers delicately placed just so. The welts enlarged as if the demon hands were enveloping the human’s skull even as Malory watched.

  I was too late! He was already in his mind!

  And Xlrud had almost had Malory, too. But why? To what end?

  Malory scrambled to his knees and pulled Silver into his lap. “Dave! Open your eyes! Look at me, Dave. Dave!”

  The human eyes opened, glittering with demon consciousness. “It’s all right, Mal. Come into my mind!”

  “Xlrud! Don’t you—?”

  “Oh, Mal, help me! He’s got me!”

  That was Silver.

  Malory reached for Silver’s demon-scorched face, and the human twisted away. “No! He’ll get you too!”

  The demon laughed with Silver’s vocal chords and turned back to Malory, smiling seductively. Silver’s hand shot up to encircle Malory’s neck and pull him down.

  Losing all physical awareness, Malory tumbled deep into Silver’s mind. With that same dizzy, disoriented helplessness he’d had on arrival at the apartment, Malory fell into Xlrud’s trap.

  Had he never entered Silver’s mind, never controlled that mortal body, he would not have fallen. Malory had opened the gateway inside Silver’s mind himself. Xlrud only yanked him through it.

  But as he spun out of control, he finally understood Silver’s initial resistance to Malory’s request. He’d been protecting Malory from the demon lodged within him, without even understanding what was happening.

  Xlrud must have lured Silver to the hotel to plant that trap in his mind. But how? A demon had to be invited into a mind. Silver just wouldn’t do that.

  However it had happened, one thing was clear. Malory had to evict the demon without destroying Silver.

  Abruptly, Malory landed hard in the demon’s illusion.

  He was seated in a movie theater with a giant wrap around screen hidden by gorgeous red velvet drapes with gold fringe several feet high. This has to be the nineteen-forties! Theaters don’t even have curtains today.

  The sumptuous folds of draperies swept aside even as the projected images already danced upon them. But there was no screen behind the drapes. It was a huge window. Bright, daylight, blinding, searing white daylight, real daylight blasted through the window carrying daytime images that pierced his skull!

  Ahhggg! Malory tried to jackknife forward to hide behind the seat in front of him, but his torso was caught in restraining straps. He felt his skin sizzling, the pain very, very real.

  A voice that wasn’t audible, Xlrud’s voice rumbled, Look upon the fate of Jerusalem and know what you see!

  Malory’s burning eyes popped wide open, pricked as if held open by demon claws. His head jerked around. Hot demon thoughts forced his eyeballs into focus on the sun drenched city of Jerusalem—a Jerusalem of the far, far future.

  Then Silver’s face replaced the image of the city, filling the window that was not a theater screen. It was a homely face with a large nose, soft brown eyes, bushy black eyebrows, and neatly trimmed black hair.

  The familiar face grew larger than the screen, and came hurtling toward them like the image of a train coming along a track. Just when the train would have begun to pass overhead, Silver’s living body impacted on Malory’s chest.

  NO! Silver’s scream filled the theater. Malory’s chair toppled over backwards, suddenly detached from its anchoring bolts.

  Malory found himself lying supine in the living room of their apartment before the toppled sofa, hurting, moaning, squirming away from pain.

  On the floor by the upended coffee table, Silver writhed in silent agony, the seared imprints of demon fingers now separated by tiny strips of normal skin.

  Malory pulled himself up. His skin felt as if he’d really been exposed to the noon sun. Appalled he thought, I’d forgotten what sun can do.

  He forced his body to rise. The pain was incredible. When he was on his knees, he surveyed the scrabbling, whimpering human form on the carpet before him.

  Sluggishly, he recognized the random movements as crawling. Though Silver’s body made no progress, clearly he was trying to crawl to his bedroom. Malory’s gaze fell on the bedroom door, the door he was unable to pass. Then his eye rose to the mezuzah.

  He was in motion before he fully understood what he planned to do. And that, he realized, was what ultimately saved their lives. Even as his hand closed on the door jamb, Xlrud yanked his mind back to the sun-drenched theater. He lost awareness of his body, even as it moved.

  Look upon the end of Time! commanded the demon.

  It can’t be real, protested Malory.

  Oh, it is. Your little friend is a veritable gold mine of talent, prophecy being the least of them. It took nothing at all to open this window in his mind to look ahead through time. Look, my old foe, look and be free.

  Abruptly, Malory understood. If Silver was a genuine precog, with the demon’s enhancement this could be real, and if it were real, then once Malory had glimpsed the end result of The One’s pact with Abram, he would be free of The One’s decree that he must live to see it. He would be able to die. He would be free to die.

  For the first time in all these millennia the possibility was real. The True Death he had often prayed for, begged for, could now be his through the auspices of David Silver, an insignificant son of Abram.

  But Silver had become a tool of Xlrud. The God of Abram insisted on an exclusive contract. Silver would be left trapped between the two Potencies as Malory had been. Or worse. His soul would disperse. The True Death no mortal could ever face in the natural course of events.

  Malory’s outrage burgeoned into strength such as even a vampire could not normally tap. Dimly, without bodily awareness, Malory heard his own scream turn to a grunt of effort, followed by a splintering crack.

  The sun’s image beat out of the theater screen-window. He smelled his own flesh burning and knew Death stalked him with real hope this time.

  Surrender to death was beautifully seductive. Xlrud had given him his heart’s desire, a way out of the trap of existence. “Why!” demanded Malory aloud. “Xlrud! Why now?”

  “He’s ready to accept your sacrifice, stubborn one.”

  Suddenly it was clear. The god of his fathers, ignored by mortals, had lost strength over the millennia. Now he needed the vitality the sacrifice of Malory’s life would bring him, the sacrifice offered millennia ago, and refused.

  But David Silver was not a willing sacrifice as Malory had been, and the City Malory’s life had been offered up to protect had long since been destroyed. Even a god couldn’t restore it.

  Unable to see the doorpost ripped from Silver’s bedroom door that he held in his hands, Malory thrust himself and the unaccountably massive burden toward where he’d left Silver.

  He couldn’t see Silver’s physical form. But he felt the human warmth pulsing gently, and it drew him through the veil of his own throbbing pain.

  The closer he came to the human, the less the scorching, blinding sun burned through his inner sight, and the less the massive burden weighed on him. He seemed to be going downhill. He heard his own rasping grunts turn to cries of immanent triumph.

  A
wareness of his physical surroundings growing, Malory tripped and sprawled over the warm lump of flesh that housed the human soul and spirit. In a hoarse whisper, all that was left of his voice after his raging screams, Malory pronounced the banishment, “Get thou gone, Oh, Southwind Spirit, and hound us no more!”

  He couldn’t bring himself to pronounce it in the name of That Which Is. If he had, perhaps that would have been the end of matters, forever.

  All he could do was use his last strength to ram the post with its fully enabled magical ward flat against Silver’s chest. The human’s feebly scrabbling hands clutched it with greedy hunger.

  At the moment of contact, Silver shouted, “Schema Israel! Hear, Oh, Israel—“

  The rest was lost in a searing white flash that burned hotter than the vision of a future noon sun over Jerusalem.

  That was all Malory remembered.

  He came to with Silver dragging him toward the hidden door which now stood open in the mantle. The lethargy of dawn gripped him, though he was aware of the pervasive pain of raw solar exposure coupled to the throb of a deeper damage that some holy objects could inflict.

  The human’s face was reddened as if with sunburn, and he hissed and whimpered with pain as he pulled Malory’s body along. “Mal! Come on, help me. You can do it. Just a little, and you’ll be safe. Come on, man!”

  With a mighty effort, Malory twitched a foot just enough for the heel to dig into the carpet and shove.

  “That’s it!” grunted the human. “Come on now, once more. Over the threshold!”

  Malory pushed with his other heel, and suddenly they were within his chamber entry. The smooth flooring let his body slide faster, and then Silver dropped him on the inner chamber’s floor and fell over his body, stretching out one arm to trigger the door closing mechanism, shutting out the pressure of light.

  The next thing Malory knew he was waking into gathering twilight, the darkness of his chamber cut only by his dimmest lights. Malory lay on his bed, Silver slumped in his easy chair beside him. On the stand beside the chair, Silver had a cut-down kit, a doctor’s field kit for inserting an I.V.

  The moment Malory’s breath wheezed into his lungs to protest Silver’s obvious intention to give him blood, Silver jerked awake. He had already rolled up one sleeve. He placed the tourniquet with the ease of long practice. A moment later, he had the open end of a large syringe pushed against Malory’s lips while with the other hand he set a timer.

  When Malory jerked his head aside, Silver followed the motion, letting the blood flow. “You haven’t healed visibly all night. You’ll never make it out of here without help. Come on, Mal, you did this to yourself for me. Let me repay you. It’s not like it’s the first time.”

  And the blood was so sweet.

  Soooo sweeettt.

  It had never—ever—been like this. The balm flowed through him leaving warmth and curious relaxation in its wake.

  He couldn’t stop, not even when Silver placed a hand on his forehead and announced, “That’s enough. Wake up, Mal.”

  He couldn’t stop.

  The human hand pushed gently, then more firmly. “Now. That’s it. Stop now.”

  The hard tube slid from his lips, and reflexively Malory followed, lips parting in the vampire’s snarl as he went for human flesh.

  “No.” It was a command, a simple, calm statement without a trace of fear in it.

  With the luxurious blood flow broken, awareness swept through Malory. The rapture abated.

  He stopped sucking, muscles locked against muscles, body half-curved in mid-air and shaking with the effort of holding back that primal strike. It would kill the human.

  Silver had rejected Malory’s offer of immortality. Malory had promised to respect that. If I kill him, I can’t bring him back.

  Malory threw himself to the far side of the bed, curling around the aching loss of the promised satisfaction, commanding the need for Silver’s so sweet blood to abate. And to his intense surprise, it did abate.

  It helped that Silver staunched the blood flow and wiped up every drop, neutralizing the scent with alcohol.

  By the time Silver circled the bed to see if the thwarted vampire was still animate, Malory had almost recovered. “You shouldn’t have done it. I told you not to.”

  “You look better already,” commented the human. “But you’ve got to hunt tonight, even though it’s early for you.”

  “I know.” But I can’t. After that—experience—nothing less will ever be acceptable.

  Silver answered the unspoken thought, “It’s not every night you defeat a demon from hell and nearly kill yourself using a mezuzah for a weapon, a weapon guaranteed to backfire in your face. You must be hurting in places you never knew you had. Things will normalize after you’ve done what you must. Pull yourself together now. You have to go. The night’s wasting.”

  Silver kept on like that, quiet, supportive, encouraging, and not letting any of the distaste, no, the revulsion, he felt show in his words. Malory knew that Silver still cringed from the knowledge that a human being would die tonight to feed a vampire. But he pushed Malory through the mechanics of showering and dressing, then forced him to practice a few reformulations from human form to mist to bat and back until he regained a semblance of equilibrium. Satisfied, Silver ushered him to the window, promising that everything would be all right soon.

  It wouldn’t, and Malory knew that Silver knew that. Nothing would be the same between them again.

  Opening the window, Malory paused, reluctant to leave the human unprotected. “Dave, I have to know something. It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask. How did Xlrud get into your mind?”

  “Exelrod?”

  “Xlrud. The demon, the creature that almost killed us both. It can’t get into a human mind without invitation.”

  “I don’t know, Mal. I’d never invite a demon into my—the Ouija board! Naw—that couldn’t...could it?”

  “What Ouija board? When did you get a Ouija board?”

  “I didn’t. At the hotel. Someone had one. We were playing. It seemed to work. I mean really work. Could the demon have been working it?”

  “That wouldn’t be enough.”

  “We used an invocation. One of the dungeonmasters thought it would be fun.”

  Dungeonmaster? “Invocation? What invocation?”

  “Awaken north wind and come thou south. It’s Biblical poetry. How could that—”

  “Xlrud’s appellation is South Wind. He tricked you through your friends, but he didn’t care about you or them. He was after me.”

  “He used me to get at you. I didn’t know the mere memory of sunlight could hurt you.”

  Memory of future sunlight! “Not ordinarily. I’ll explain it to you sometime.” With the mystery cleared up, Malory felt better. “Just don’t call the winds by their directional names, and you’ll be safe while I’m gone.” He reformulated and went to do what he had to do with as much clinical dispatch as he could muster.

  At least he had already researched his next victim. He hadn’t the patience for research tonight, nor the confidence in his judgment that would leave his conscience as clean as it could ever be.

  When it was over and the body of the drug runner’s hit man, a superbly talented individual who would never have been caught by the law, had been thoroughly disposed of, Malory found a glimmering of optimism returning. His body had accepted the sordid, bitter blood even though his mind and memory found it inadequate by comparison.

  His healing accelerated. By the time he returned to the apartment, his skin had stopped smarting and he could fly without wobbling.

  But as he closed the window behind him and stood facing Silver who was kicked back in his recliner, Malory braced for the most devastating experience of his long existence. Silver’s rejection.

  He knew it had to come. It just had to. San Francisco had been nothing; a little ceremonial magick against vampire-hunting criminals. But this had been a direct encounter with an entity which
could not exist within Silver’s technologically derived world view. And Silver himself had started it all by answering a computer BBS posting, and playing a silly game with a mundane toy.

  Silver’s face was bruised, and he had plastered bandaids on his arms and hands. He wore an elastic support around his left ankle. The splinters of the door post had been vacuumed up, the furniture straightened. A bedspread covered the sofa concealing most of the torn upholstery.

  Malory didn’t remember how that had happened.

  But the most remarkable difference in the apartment was the psychic silence. The mezuzah had evaporated. Perversely, Malory missed the noise. The place didn’t feel like home without it. Only the furniture polish and after-shave marked it as Silver’s residence...that and the packed suitcase sitting beside the front door.

  Silver flicked his remote at the TV and the VCR display shifted to pause. He had been watching a tape, though he’d been staring at a series of commercials.

  “Better?” asked Silver.

  “Yes.”

  Silver got up to face Malory, and the vampire tensed. “I’ve been thinking, Mal.”

  “Good.” Damn.

  “Yeah. It took awhile for my mind to unglue. Maybe you can sort of take that kind of thing in stride, but I....Shit! I just don’t think I can live in this apartment anymore.”

  “I fully understand. I’ll see to it that all of our financial agreements are termin—”

  Silver paled. “Am I fired for what I did to you? I know you said not to give you blood, but—”

  “I thought you just said you’re leaving.”

  “Not my job with you, just this apartment. Florida, too, if I can convince you to go that far.”

  “The Potencies can find us anywhere.”

  “So, then, why not go? Believe me, Mal, I know myself. I’ll never sleep another wink in this place, and I—I just want to get away. Someplace with no weird associations.”

  “Anywhere you want, anywhere but the north pole. Half the year, the sun never sets.”