“Aye,” Dagan said. “And there was no way we were leaving Jeff behind. It was downright disturbing, seeing one vampire attacking another that way. Even before we knew it was Jeff, we planned to stop Patrick. It was dreadful.”
Martin continued examining Jeff, gently lifted his eyelids. He turned back to Sammi and said to Rebecca, “We need to amputate.”
“What?” she asked, startled.
“We need to take the arm now. Before we lose her.”
“But who?” Dagan asked.
“I don’t care who,” Martin said. “There are thousands of vampires down there. Find one who used to be a doctor.”
Dagan rubbed his hands briskly over his face and motioned for help carrying Sammi into the back.
Martin looked. “Not you, Dagan. I need your help with something else.” The twins stood within hearing distance and had been watching. “Luke, take care of this.”
Luke nodded. He and Tim had just gotten back from Montreal. They carefully lifted the stretcher and carried Sammi out of the area.
Martin turned back to Dagan. “I need a human, a strong one, in good health. Enemy or—doesn’t matter. Just find someone and bring him or her back quickly.”
“How am I supposed to know they’re in good health? Should I ask for a blood test?”
Martin’s mouth snapped open and shut. “Don’t be a smart ass. Just get someone.”
“Alive?”
“Alive. Hurry.”
Dagan disappeared through the door and into the dark outer corridor.
“He needs blood,” Martin said to no one in particular. “Desperately.”
They carried Jeff into the pseudo-bedroom and placed him on a bed. There was nothing Martin could do now until Dagan returned.
“Tell me more,” Martin said to Rebecca. “Where’s Patrick now?”
“About thirty miles from here. In a cabin in the woods.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m sorry, Martin. We were only there for a couple of minutes.”
“How did you happen to come across that cabin? It wasn’t exactly on the direct route here.”
“Dagan and I noticed a large number of vampires headed that way. They weren’t any of ours, as far as we could tell, so I wondered who they were, where they were headed.”
Martin nodded. “We’re going back at sundown.”
“I figured as much. By the way—” She leaned over Jeff’s prone body and tenderly caressed his hair with feathery touches. “Who sired him?”
Martin narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, but he had his suspicions.
“I thought he didn’t want to be one.”
“He didn’t.”
***
Janelle watched her mother disappear down Park Avenue, her vampires following, and then she sobbed. Her body hitched, and tears slid down her cheeks.
That was her mother.
Her mother.
Janelle retrieved the crosses from the church steps and jammed them into her pockets. She palmed away the tears.
This was wrong … this wasn’t fair. She had her mother back from the dead. Her mother should have bundled her into her arms, held her close, stroked her hair. Her mother would have done these things. That couldn’t have been her mother. It just looked like her … Janelle didn’t know who that really was. And she refused to believe her mother had become one of them. Maybe she was hypnotized, or brainwashed.
But her eyes … Janelle hadn’t recognized the eyes. They were different somehow; cold, uncaring, as if the life had gone out of them.
Janelle wandered from Park Avenue to Madison to Fifth, heading downtown, past the remains of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, past the entrances to Central Park, past people along the way, followed the cobblestoned sidewalk running parallel to the park. Looking decidedly purposeful but not having any direction whatsoever.
She stopped abruptly. Wait a second. If Manhattan was an island, and the vampires were coming in somehow—Martin had mentioned he was returning to his home upstate—just how were the vampires getting in and out of Manhattan?
The Lincoln tunnel was blocked. Was there another tunnel?
Following them was the only way to find out. She had to follow them. Had to find her mother.
***
“Why isn’t he getting better?” Rebecca paced, and she threw up her hands and then slapped them against her sides.
“Take it easy.” Martin stood over Jeff, staring at the dying man’s face, wanting to do something more but not knowing what. Everything he’d done up until now had been driven by instinct—it wasn’t as if he had a medical journal that covered this. Even consulting with vampires who were former doctors was useless. This was new territory for all of them.
“The feeding should have helped,” Martin said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Maybe he needs more blood.”
Jeff was pallid, his complexion resembling a dead fish, his cheeks spotted with red and pink flecks. Blood leaked from the corners of his eyes, dribbled from his nose, from his ears. His diseased pallor hadn’t improved, despite the feeding.
“He’s in limbo,” Martin muttered. “Somewhere between the living and the dead … not quite a human, not quite a vampire. This is a normal part of the transition—but he should have been past this a long time ago. I don’t know how badly damaged he was by what Patrick did to him. I don’t know if he can recover from it.”
“So what are you thinking?” Rebecca whispered. “You can’t leave him this way.”
At that moment, Martin wished he had Patrick in front of him. “We really have two options, as far as I can tell. Kill him and end this now. End his misery. Or I can take his blood, complete his transformation. I can try, anyway. I don’t know if that’ll work at this point.”
“He wanted to die.”
“I know, but he said that under duress. No one really wants to die, Rebecca.”
“He’s not a vampire, yet the sun nearly killed him.”
“I think that’s what saved him. If he was one of us, he would surely be dead.” He ran his hands over his bristly hair and groaned.
“So what are you going to do?”
He studied her for a moment, taking her in. He admired her and appreciated that she had stayed with him throughout everything. It went beyond a blood devotion. She truly was family. Being with her had a calming effect, and he smiled.
He took her hand and led her to the door. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said. “I need privacy.”
When Rebecca was gone, he sat beside Jeff on the bed. “I’m sorry, my friend,” he whispered. “I’m sorry this happened to you, and that I wasn’t around to help you. But I can’t let you go. Not this way.”
He lifted Jeff into his arms and cradled him in his lap like a child. Jeff’s skin split like overripe fruit. Martin inhaled deeply and tilted Jeff’s head back until it hung suspended over the crook of Martin’s arm, revealing the burnt, withered flesh of his neck. Jagged, mottled scars painted the skin.
Martin pulled back his upper lip to expose his razor-sharp teeth and leaned in. He licked an area of the neck, trying to soften the skin, knowing this was going to hurt because of how badly Jeff was wounded. He instinctively found the carotid artery and broke the skin, wrapping his mouth around the new wound, consuming the blood until Jeff’s body was drained, until Jeff breathed no more.
Martin quickly bit into his own wrist, ripping away a jagged chunk of flesh, exposing sinew and muscle, the vein pumping furiously. Martin held his wrist over Jeff’s mouth and his blood poured down Jeff’s throat, splashed his face and neck, ran up his nostrils.
Jeff gasped, choking on the blood, coughing, trying to spit it out. He struggled in Martin’s lap and fell to the floor, landing on his hands and knees.
Martin fell over, drained of blood and energy.
Rebecca had heard the commotion and rushed in, but Martin shook his head and groaned. “Leave him!” His voice was raspy and his body trembled.
/>
Jeff flopped around on the floor, gurgling, clutching his throat, spitting up blood.
She helped Martin to his feet. “What’s happening to him? I’ve never seen this before!”
Martin clung to her arm and leaned on her for support, and they left Jeff alone.
In the living room they rested on the sofa, Martin exhausted, Rebecca filled with questions Martin didn’t seem willing or able to answer.
Chapter 21
Janelle skipped up sidewalks that had only recently been impassable.
The first thing people had done was take care of the dead. Stacks of bodies still lined the streets, despite weeks’ worth of effort. The bodies waited with interminable patience to be taken away, carted off in what used to be sanitation trucks, headed for mass graves.
New York was again beginning to resemble New York.
Music filled the air, which was somehow unsettling for Janelle. It felt so unusual. Just having electricity restored felt strange, and now this.
Life was returning to normal.
And still no one mentioned the vampires.
Janelle wished someone would say something. She listened in on conversations ranging from the weather to the condition of the country to people’s favorite music. They talked about sports and children and gardening and deceased family members and fashion and pets and West Nile virus and the stock market, but no one seemed terribly concerned about … them.
Until nightfall.
Streetlamps had once again been set on timers and automatically lit the streets at sunset. And the moment the lights came on, conversations would stop, and countless pairs of eyes suddenly glanced up at the lamps. People focused on the shadows in the corners of buildings, and they inexplicably searched the red-tinged skies, and they huddled a bit closer, fingering the crosses that hung on chains around their necks.
Still. It wasn’t a topic of conversation.
Even when Janelle tried to make it one.
But they ignored her, or changed the subject. Not that it was easy for her to bring up. She recognized the looks they gave her, looks that said, Go away, kid, you’re bugging me. Looks she’d seen too many times before.
Some things never change.
Janelle wandered off. She sat beside one of two stone lions guarding the public library that had survived intact, her feet dangling off the side of the crumbling wall.
“Hey.” A boy around Janelle’s age stood by her feet, his Yankees cap pulled backward. His sweater was too large and too dirty.
“Hey yourself.”
“You alone?”
She cocked her head and flashed him a warning glance—eyes slitted, head lowered. Her don’t-mess-with-me look. “Why you asking?”
He shrugged. “I’m alone. My family’s dead. I guess I was just wondering if you’re alone too.”
“Yeah. I’m alone. But I’m real tough, so …” She crossed her arms and leaned against the lion.
He hopped up on the short wall and sat beside her. “I heard what you said to those people a while back. How you were tryin’ to get them to listen.”
Which conversation? she wondered. There had been many attempts to talk to people, but most of them didn’t pay attention. “So?” She was used to dealing with her trouble-making brothers, and her defenses were up.
“I believe you. About the vampires. And you’re right, we need to do something.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
The huge sweater hid his small shoulders when he shrugged. “Something.”
“Man …” she teased. “With all the clothing stores around, you pick that to wear?”
“It was my dad’s,” he said quietly.
“Oh. Sorry.” She wished she had something of her mother’s to wear.
“S’okay.” There was silence, but it wasn’t awkward. It was strangely comforting for Janelle.
“I’m Thomas.”
“Janelle.”
Again silence. This time he leaned against the lion, and they enjoyed one another’s company without having to say a word.
***
The young guy they brought back looked pissed, and afraid. He struggled against their vice grips, but his eyes were wide and glassy. They dragged him inside the caves, to Martin, and pushed him to the ground beside the bed.
“Fuck you! Fuck you!” A string of saliva dangled from his lips, but his head hung dejectedly. He cocked his head up and scowled. He was surrounded, and seemed to be admitting defeat in a defiant way—as if resigned to his fate but not willing to go down without a fight. “I don’t want to be a goddamned vampire!”
“You’re not,” Martin said. “I really am sorry. I know it’s unfair to sacrifice one so another may live, but such is the way of things.”
“Sacrifice? Fuck you!” the guy screamed, scrambling away on his butt.
Martin nodded, which set the vampires in motion. Dagan chased after the human, and he and a handful of others dragged the victim back.
“Over here,” Martin said.
They picked him effortlessly up off the floor and held him over Jeff’s prone body.
“I want his neck over Jeff’s mouth,” Martin said breathily, closing in on the human, Martin’s claws unsheathed, his fangs glistening with saliva.
Jeff tried to open his eyes, which were crusted over with dirt and fungus. They were sunken into his head, giving him an ancient appearance, a look of death and suffering many times over. A thick slab of tongue popped out of his mouth, and he tried to lick his withered, cracked lips. “Don’t …” he gasped.
“Don’t try to talk,” Martin said, clasping Jeff’s hand.
The human, staring into the face of the diseased vampire, began to wail. He bucked and thrashed, but Dagan and the others held him.
“Let me die …” Jeff moaned, sounding ancient, tired, suffering so much. “Please … die …”
But it was too late. Martin’s claws were in the human’s throat, ripping it open, blood pouring from the wound, splashing Jeff’s face and neck and hair. He lapped it up, not meaning to, not wanting to, unable to control his bloodlust. He moaned at his salvation, cried at his damnation.
The drained, dead human was taken away, and Jeff sank back against the pillows.
“Is he okay now?” Dagan asked.
Martin looked up and slowly licked the blood from his fingers. “I hope so.”
“Do you know who did this to him?”
Martin shook his head. “I strongly suspect Patrick.”
Dagan thought for a moment and then nodded. “Makes perfect sense. Unfortunately. What are you planning to do?”
“If it’s true … I don’t want to think about what I’ll do.”
***
A little while later Martin met with Dagan, Nelson, Rebecca, Lana, and Paula. Too many of his original family were still unaccounted for—the twins, and now Patrick. He didn’t want to think about Patrick.
In the large cave, several thousand vampires waited for Martin to speak. Waited for his guidance, his leadership. To tell them what was next.
Martin was aware of this as he paced the living room. “Are you waiting for me to say something?” he asked, stopping abruptly. “Well don’t. Don’t hold your breath—as it were.” He resumed pacing.
“We knew this was bound to happen,” Lana said quietly. “Why are you so upset?”
“Why am I upset? Lana, you remember what it was like. You go back almost as far as I do.”
She nodded. “I remember.”
“What is it?” Dagan asked. “What’s the matter?”
Martin finally sat on the sofa, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. “Lana and I remember what it was like, hundreds of years ago. We sacrificed much when we allowed ourselves to be captured.”
“Allowed?” Rebecca leaned forward in her chair. “Why would you do that?”
Martin closed his eyes, his long lashes dusting his high cheekbones. “We were defeated. It was that or death. And I wasn’t yet ready to die. A perman
ent death I mean, of course.
“There isn’t much to tell. Lana and I knew each other in life, and when I sired her, to join me in our deaths and undeaths, she and I planned to spend eternity together. And for several hundred years we traveled together, and we survived. We made the unfortunate mistake of visiting this country about two hundred years ago. At that time, there were seven of us—Lana, me, Patrick, Tim, Luke—and of course Dagan and Rebecca. I expected the loyalty to be endless, and without defiance. What Patrick has done is unimaginable. I never expected this to happen.”
“None of you knew this? You didn’t know what Patrick was like?” Nelson asked. “I mean, you spend two hundred years together, yet this was a surprise?”
They nodded yes, all but Paula, who shrugged. She said, “I’m new too.”
“Well,” Nelson said, scratching his short, kinky beard. “I have to say, not needing to shave after all this time is going to be a pleasure. Still, I’m kinda torn about all this. It’s not like I was given a choice. The dudes who sired me and my people invaded my assisted-living residence. I’ll tell you, Martin, I’d much rather have done this twenty years ago.”
“Why?” Martin asked. “Age has no meaning anymore. You’re the same as the rest of us.”
“I know, but I just don’t look the part. A little too much gray in the old beard.”
Martin smiled. “You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Dagan said, clapping his hands together. “So now what? We won their blasted war for them, didn’t we? What happens next?”
“Easy, Lucky Charms,” Rebecca teased. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
“I hate that expression,” he said, shoving her.
“Good question,” Martin said. “That’s why I’ve asked you to join me. You’ve each proven to be exceptional leaders, and I think it’s time we come up with some plans.”
“This isn’t going to be good. Is it?” Paula asked, planting her face in her palms. “I mean, the humans aren’t going to just accept us back.”
What Happens in the Darkness Page 20