The Harvesting

by Melanie Karsak

  “Not you?”

  “Not me. I once enjoyed being human.”

  “And what about Ian?”

  “Ian is now a pet whether he knows it or not. But I understand it is Rumor’s intention to offer immortal life.”

  My stomach shook. “I need your help. Please, talk to my people. They need to see these creatures for what they are before it’s too late. I need to get my people safe, and until they believe me, I can’t do that. Please, they will believe you. Please talk to them.”

  “Every eye in this place is already on you. They watch your every move. I can do nothing for you without risking myself. It is a risk just talking to you.”

  “What if we take Ian off the blood?”

  “The cancer will return and kill him.”

  “We saw something strange. The blood of the undead seemed to, well, it seemed to make one of Rumor’s people return back to their mortal self. Maybe Ian--”

  “No,” Dr. Madala interrupted. “You’re right. It will return him to a mortal life, but he will return fully intact and with whatever mortal ailments he once carried. The vampiric seed only provides its healing power while he carries its magic. Becoming a vampire does not, as we were lead to believe, kill you. It simply transforms you to another state of existence, something different from human.”

  “Just like the undead.”

  “Yes, just like them.”

  I stood. “Then there is no hope for Ian.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I turned and walked out looking back down the hallway toward Ian’s room. I had once loved Ian with every fiber of my being. I had wanted to be his wife, to bear his children. The echo of that love had thundered loudly when I had first arrived in Hamletville almost seven months ago, but it had become clear almost immediately that it was just that—an echo. I had once loved him, but that is all. In place of that love was fondness stemming from our shared history. I’d once thought him my soul-mate, but he betrayed me. Ian didn’t choose the vampire blood, but his change betrayed all of us. It was truly too late. And while it made me sad, I felt even sadder for the great loss Jamie would feel . . . Jamie, who had never betrayed anyone.

  I stepped back outside and took a deep breath. Jamie needed to know. I headed toward the front of the hotel, but Will intercepted me.

  “Oh my god! There you are,” he said breathlessly.

  “What is it?” I asked, wiping a tear from my eye.

  “Kira and Susan are missing.”

  My heart skipped a beat. We rushed back to Frenchie’s room. When we entered, I saw Frenchie’s face and eyes were red. Buddie was talking to her in a quiet tone. Jamie stood over them. Summer and Tom were sitting on the bed listening.

  Everyone looked up when I entered.

  Frenchie collapsed into tears. I went to her side and put my hand on her shoulder.

  “She took them outside for some air. Kira dropped her bear in one of the fountains. Frenchie reached down to get it and when she got back up, the girls were gone,” Jamie told me.

  “I came back hoping they were here,” Frenchie sobbed. “Layla, I looked everywhere.” Frenchie’s voice was hoarse from screaming.

  “How long ago?” I asked.

  “Maybe twenty minutes,” she whimpered.

  “Dusty went back to the fountains to check again,” Buddie told me.

  “Boots on the ground. In pairs. We need everyone. Now,” I said.

  Tom and Summer nodded and headed out of the room. I could hear them knocking on doors in the hallway followed by the sound of Hamletville voices. Soon there was a flurry of movement.

  “Can you track them?” I asked Buddie.

  “Let’s see,” he replied, and the four of us headed back to the garden where Frenchie had last seen her daughters. It was a beautiful place, full of fresh spring tulips, the air perfumed with hyacinth. The fountains shimmered in the sunlight.

  Jamie and I stood aside as Frenchie talked and Buddie scanned the ground.

  “Where have you been?” Jamie asked.

  There was too much to tell. “Later,” I whispered.

  Jamie looked inquisitively, but just then Dusty came up to us. “No sign,” he whispered.

  Buddie went over the ground looking again and again. He shook his head. “I see tracks in, nothing out.”

  Frenchie sobbed.

  I took her hand. “We’ll find them.”

  I scanned the horizon. Two girls could not vanish into thin air. We set off in groups and began searching the island. By late afternoon, no one had seen anything. Getting together as many of the Hamletville people as we could, we regrouped in Frenchie’s room. No one had seen any sign of the girls.

  “Maybe we should tell the hotel staff,” Ethel suggested.

  “No, no way,” Dusty said. “They took those girls.”

  Ethel looked shocked. “Are you sure?”

  Everyone was looking at one another. By now they had all heard someone had tried to kill me and about Pastor Frank’s accident. This, coupled with the news of Kira’s and Susan’s disappearance, had everyone on edge. Not only that, they also had heard reports from the other hotel guests. Others related tales of accidents and odd disappearances.

  “Layla?” Tom said.

  The entire room looked at me. I could tell from the pained expressions on their faces, they knew I had been right.

  “We need to find Kira and Susan, and then we need to get out of here,” I said.

  Several people nodded.

  “What is happening here? What are these people?” Ethel asked.

  I looked at Jamie and gave him a should we tell them expression.

  He looked as uncertain as I did. “They’re vampires,” he said at last.

  Several people in the group looked stunned.

  Jeff laughed out loud. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Vampires don’t exist.”

  “Just like that zombie that tried to chew your foot off last week doesn’t exist, right?” Kiki said stingingly.

  “Have you seen Ian? He looks so much better. They are helping us,” Mrs. Finch said.

  I looked at Jamie. We hadn’t talked yet, so I said nothing.

  “Yeah, just like they helped Pastor Frank off the cliff,” Buddie replied.

  “Or helped Layla out the fourth floor window,” Jamie added.

  “Or helped us come here by tracking us on the radio,” Kiki said.

  Several people in the group still looked unsure.

  “Look,” Tom said, “you all know I wanted to come here more than anyone, but Layla was right. You can feel it, right? It’s that same bad feeling you get when you walk home alone in the dark, or when you are in a room and can sense someone else is there. I used to get that feeling all the time when I fought fires, like something was squeezing my throat. Don’t you all feel it too?” he asked them. “We can’t see what it is, but she can,” he said, looking at me. “We have to trust Layla.”

  “We’re a few days too late,” Ethel said.

  “We’re still alive,” I replied.

  “It’s all there. You just have to look. They cast no shadow. They don’t walk in the daylight. They don’t eat food. They look wrong,” Buddie said.

  I could see by the overwhelming fear and despair on their faces, they had been convinced.

  “We have to find those girls,” Summer whispered.

  It occurred to me that wherever they had Kira and Susan, it was some place we had not yet seen, some place where the hosts were sleeping during the day.

  “We will find them, and we will get out of here. We need to keep looking, but we also need to get ready. Is the bar well stocked?” I asked, turning to Jeff.

  He looked confused but nodded. “It’s huge.”

  “We need bottles. Hard liquor. As much as you can get. Can you do that?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll help,” Will offered.

  “You all need to play it cool. Keep to yourselves. Tomorrow morning, dawn, after they go to sleep
, we’ll torch this place and go. We just need to make it through the night,” I said.

  “What if we don’t find them by then?” Frenchie asked.

  “We’ll find them.”

  We made a plan to round up supplies and people. Everyone would meet at the front porch on the eastern end of the hotel at dawn. Several of us broke into groups to go looking for the girls, but it was late afternoon, and there was less than an hour of daylight left.

  Jamie made me promise to check on Ian again while he and Tom went out once more to look for the girls. It was not a trip I was looking forward to making.

  When I got to the infirmary, Ian was sitting on the side of his bed staring at his hands. The I.V. was gone. He had redressed in clothes I did not recognize. When he turned to look at me, I froze. His blue eyes had totally lost their pigment and had changed to an icy color. It was not just the color of his eyes that startled me but what I saw lying behind them. It was not Ian who looked out at me but his shadow aspect—his dark, angry self. I had seen glimpses of that side of him before and feared it. Once, long ago, he’d drunk too much at a party and thought I was paying too much attention to another man. On the way back to the car, he’d hit me. He was sorry later, but now he had the same look in his eyes. I knew then the transformation he had made was not just a physical one. His id had now slipped its chain.

  “Layla,” he said, “I was just thinking about you.”

  “You’re looking much better, Ian,” I replied carefully.

  He smiled at me. “It’s strange, isn’t it,” he said, and then looked again at his hands, turning them over and back. “I feel perfectly fine. In fact, I feel really good. Come sit by me,” he said and patted the bed beside him.

  I felt my spine stiffen, but I went all the same.

  He turned and looked at me, brushing the hair away from my face. “You look worried,” he said.

  “Kira and Susan are missing.”

  He frowned. “Maybe they will be at the party tonight,” he said absently.

  “What party?” I asked.

  Ian then slid his hands up my arms. He pushed my shirt sleeve up to reveal the tattoo on my arm and shoulder. “Once upon a time, we were one,” he said, looking at the tattoo. His hands tightened on my arms. “Now you’re fucking my brother.”

  “Ian,” I began, but with exceptional speed and strength, he pushed me onto the bed and laid on top of me, stuffing his hand down the front of my pants while he squeezed the tattoo on my arm. He shoved his hand hard into my panties and then into the soft folds of my flesh, pressing his fingers into my body.

  “Ahh,” he groaned as he thrust his fingers deeper inside me, rubbing his crotch against my body. “Come on, Layla. You’re letting Jamie fuck you all night long. At least you can blow me one more time,” he said as he leaned in, whispering in my ear.

  With my free hand, I pulled my gun from its holster and leveled the barrel on Ian’s forehead.

  Startled, he opened his eyes.

  I pulled the lever back. “How about I blow your brains across the ceiling?”

  He leapt away from me. Seconds later he was standing in the middle of the room. I centered the gun on him.

  He grunted. “Fuck you. Let Jamie have you then,” he said and walked out of the room.

  I rose and looked out the door. Ian had already passed the hallway. The door leading outside swung closed. He was gone.

  Chapter 31

  I found Jamie alone in our room. He had been packing up our gear and reloading his weapons. He read the look on my face.

  “What is it? The girls?” he asked.

  I shook my head and sat down on the bed, pulling Jamie to sit beside me. I held his hands and looked him in the eyes. “They have been giving Ian blood transfusions since we arrived.”

  Jamie looked confused. “Blood transfusions?”

  “I spoke to Dr. Madala. He said Dr. Rostov started Ian on the treatment. The blood . . . James, it’s their blood.”

  I could feel his fingers growing cold. He looked down at the floor. His body, pressed against mine, started shaking.

  “I just left him. He’s different. I don’t know how to explain it. Dr. Madala said Ian is a pet, but Rumor intends to turn him.”

  “Then we can still save him.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. While I never had a sibling, I understood that it would be useless to try to stop him. Jamie helped people. That was what he did.

  “Ian left the infirmary. Wherever he is, I bet Kira and Susan are there. ”

  “Where do you think they are?”

  “Fifth floor.”

  “We can hardly just waltz up there.”

  “Not unless we’d like to be dinner. But I do have an idea.”

  Jamie squeezed my hand. “Now, that’s my girl.”

  “I’m guessing you did rope climbing in basic training?”

  Jamie looked questioningly at me.

  “The dumbwaiter Kiki and I used. There is no way you and I would fit, but we can use the shaft to climb up. From our floor, we can make it . . . I think. Or we could just rappel up the side of the building, but I thought this would provide a bit more subterfuge.”

  “Layla . . . this is dangerous. They might kill us. Christ, they might eat us. I should go alone. You just get everyone out of here.”

  I shook my head. “It’s no worse than what we have lived through already. I promised Frenchie a long time ago I’d protect those girls. Besides, I don’t want to let you have all the fun.”

  Jamie laughed and started rooting around in his bag. He handed me a pair of gloves and pulled on his as well. “Let’s get it over with.”

  The hallways of the hotel were strangely quiet.

  “Where is everyone?” Jamie whispered.

  I shook my head.

  To our luck, when I lifted the wall hatch on the dumbwaiter, we found it was still lowered to the first floor. Inside, we found the lift system made a ladder we could use to brace ourselves as we climbed up. With a nod, I climbed in and began the ascent. Jamie came after me, pulling the hatch closed behind him. The fifth floor was about twenty feet above. In silence, we climbed.

  As we neared the fifth floor, I began to hear voices. People were talking in the hallway outside the dumbwaiter. My hands shook. Could they smell us? Sense us? I closed my eyes and tried to think. When I did, I heard that strange murmuring sound I’d been catching ever since I’d first encountered them. It was like I was almost hearing voices. I’d once read that vampires were telepathic. Was it their telepathy I was hearing? Suddenly, I felt crazy.

  Jamie tugged my boot and looked questioningly at me.

  I motioned for him to listen.

  He nodded.

  We waited a moment longer for the voices in the hallway to recede then pressed onward. It was a hard climb. Once we got to the top, I tried to brace myself so I could press the hatch open just a little. Jamie climbed up close to me, and we waited. Everything on the fifth floor seemed very quiet.

  With a nod, I pushed the hatch open and peered outside. No one was moving and it was very dark. There were a few candles lit in the hallway; they turned everything into long shadows. I could see the end of the hall. The window there had been occluded by a large black drape, blocking out even the moonlight.

  Despite my earlier boasting, I was afraid. The unthinking undead were one thing, but a calculating vampire who had our girls, who had turned Ian, was something altogether different. Raw violence eats you alive in one big swallow. Intelligent aggression was a slow, painful death.

  I pushed the hatch open, slid out, and unsheathed my sword. Jamie exited behind me. I could feel the wild energy around him; he was desperate to save his brother. He held his hunting knife in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  We made our way down the hall. Most of the doors were closed. As carefully as possible, I tried a door. It was locked. The hall was exceedingly dark. I could barely make my way in the large expanses of black space between the candles. It was li
ke trying to walk around in a closet—or maybe, a coffin. As we neared a hallway, I motioned to Jamie. There was an evacuation map that indicated there were three large penthouses at one end of the floor. With a nod, we headed in that direction.

  When we turned the corner that housed the penthouses, we saw light emitting from one of the rooms. From inside, we heard voices.

  “I thought you said it would be ready,” a woman said in a heavy accent. I recognized the voice as belonging to Katya.

  “I’m almost done. It’s not like pouring wine, you know,” I heard Dr. Rostov reply. I heard a strange sound, almost like a grunt. Then there was the awful sound of sliding metal. The doctor spoke again. “Give it maybe fifteen minutes then toss it.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  “Later.”

  We heard a sound like clinking glass headed in our direction.

  I pulled Jamie into an alcove. We slid in beside the soda machine. Neither of us dared to breathe. I peered out. In the dim candlelight I saw Katya pass by carrying a large wine decanter and some glasses. The glass decanter caught the candlelight as she passed revealing the shape of a human heart inside. I looked up at Jamie. I could tell by the expression on his face he’d seen it too.

  When we no longer heard the glass clinking, we stepped out. From inside the room we heard the doctor groan and heard a strange slurping sound. We went to the door and looked inside. There we saw the doctor leaning over in a chair, his back to us, a large bundle across his legs. Remembering their ability to turn to shadow, I knew we had to be fast.

  I nodded to Jamie and we rushed the room, closing the door behind us. The doctor looked up. His face was dripping with blood. He stood. The body of a young woman dropped to the floor. She had been wearing a pale purple sundress. Her skin now looked snow white. The dress strap had been cut. Her chest had been sliced open, her heart removed from her chest. The doctor looked shocked.

  “Where are the girls,” I whispered harshly, lowering my blade to his throat. He might be able to shift quickly, but not before I could decapitate him.

  He smiled at me, but I pressed the blade in more deeply. “Not so fast,” I said. “Talk!”