Blood Hunt

by Christopher Buecheler

  Tori was struck by a sudden urge, so strong it was nearly impossible to resist, to simply turn around and run. She didn’t understand it, but the sound of the dripping faucet had filled her with a slow and crawling dread. Mealworms inching up her back, snakes churning in her stomach, a cold and mold-coated floor against her skin. Abraham had made her feel like this, when she first met him, before he bit her and stole her life away.

  She fought down the urge to flee, turned instead and glanced toward the kitchen. When she saw the hand, she felt no rush of surprise, but the crawling feeling intensified. It was just a hand resting on its side, the arm attached to it blocked from view by the lip of the kitchen door. Just a hand, but it told her everything in an instant. The fingertips were dark, even for this low light, and curled slightly. Beneath them the floor was black and slick. Tori let out a low moan and, taking steps on legs that seemed unwilling to obey, walked to the kitchen door.

  Mona Perrault – Mom – lay on her side, eyes wide and staring, in a pool of semi-congealed liquid that looked like ink in the dim confines of the kitchen. Mona’s throat was not so much cut as torn out, a ruined mess of flesh and cartilage. Her wrists were crisscrossed with a pattern of slashes, and her other hand, the one that had not been visible from the living room, clutched still at the edge of a cupboard door, reaching toward the telephone.

  Tori stared, feeling stupid and slow, not yet ready or willing to comprehend the sight before her. She looked away from the body, toward the counter, and reeled backward as if dealt a physical blow. Her feet slipped out from under her on the slick floor and she fell, cracking her head against the oak cabinetry, barely noticing the pain.

  Sprawled across the counter was a thing that had once been her father. This thing, like Mona, was missing its throat, covered in blood, eyes staring blankly out at nothing. Where Mona’s wrists had merely been slashed, Jim’s had been reduced to tattered strips of skin and muscle, his palms and fingers also lacerated. His arms were stretched out before him, bound at the wrists, his face frozen in an expression not of fear or hate or horror but of desperation. He seemed to be looking at her for help, for salvation, and Tori was consumed with the desire to get away from those staring eyes and whatever accusation she might find there if she looked too long.

  She scrabbled backward on her hands, moving like a crab, making nonsense sounds of negation and slipping on the wet floor. She reached the living room and would have kept going if not for the pain that lanced up from her left palm, too strong to be ignored. More glass from the broken lights, this time embedded deep into her flesh. Tori held her hands up before her and saw in the first light of day, shining in from the bay window, that they were streaked with crimson. These bright, new streaks mixed with Mona’s older, darker blood. Between her fingers, Tori could see both faces, both pairs of eyes. They stared out at her from the kitchen, from the place where both of her parents had been butchered and now lay dead.

  Looking at those eyes, Tori began to scream.

  Chapter 2

  A Walk in the Rain

  The borough of Brooklyn sat brooding under a wet blanket of stratus clouds, muttering and grumbling, longing for sun. Summer was turning slowly to fall, and New York was preparing now for the wet, and the cold, and the long nights of winter. Not even October yet, and still there was a bite to the wind that snagged in the corners of jackets, a heaviness to the rain better suited to the short, grey days ahead.

  Rhes Thompson, out walking because the atmosphere at home was more dismal even than this rain, could’ve done without it.

  “Figures. First the phone call, then the fight, and now I get God pissing down the back of my neck. Some fucking day.”

  Rhes looked mainly at the wet concrete in front of him, letting his feet carry him where they would. He was not out on any errand, had no real destination, was simply walking without a plan.

  The day had started out well enough, waking under heavy covers to the pleasant sound of light rain against the windows. His girlfriend Sarah next to him, warm and naked, her chest rising and falling against his arm. Down the hall their ward, Molly, slept peacefully, the demons of her past held at bay for the time being. Outside was grey and miserable, no doubt, but inside they had comfort and warmth.

  And breakfast, which he had been in the process of cooking when both girls had come wandering down the stairs. Molly had announced that she would be leaving at noon to spend the day, and night, at a friend’s house. Sarah had said she wanted to visit a new exhibit – tactile art for the blind – being featured at MoMA. This had sounded fine to Rhes, and so the plan had seemed complete. Then Sarah had suggested the phone call, and everything had gone to hell.

  A honk, the sound of wet skidding, a muffled curse. Rhes looked up to realize that he had wandered into an intersection without really checking for traffic first, and had nearly been run over. He waved, ducked his head, put on an apologetic face. Sorry, my bad. The driver rolled his eyes, shrugged, motioned him along. Eh, whaddaya gonna do about it?

  His mind was not on the roads, and Rhes resolved to walk more avenue blocks, crossing fewer streets. He found himself wishing for his old neighborhood, Bedford Stuyvesant, and the thought amused him. Fewer cars during the day, certainly, but even he hadn’t been comfortable going far from the apartment at night. Their new place, a two-bedroom duplex in Park Slope, was beautiful and safe, but his feet had not yet learned the roads.

  Rhes liked to walk, even in the rain. He was not a quick thinker like Sarah, but he often had success working out problems when given the time. Walking served this need, though in this instance he was not sure the problem could be solved, no matter how long he worked at it. It was not the fight that worried him, not really; the occasional argument was inevitable. It was the girl who had caused the argument, who was at its core, that he was pondering now.

  When he had first met her, Two had been a pretty, perky young woman who had adapted quite well to the life she had chosen for herself. He hadn’t always approved of the ways in which she earned her living, but overall he had thought her smart and well-equipped to survive life on the city streets. Then had come the heroin, the pimp, the prostitution. She had fought through all that, amazingly, with the help of a lover, and come through to the other side scarred but alive. For a short time, the Two he had known seemed to have emerged. She had stormed off to Ohio with Tori, determined to return the girl to a normal life.

  When she had come back to New York, though, Two had been different. Pensive, preoccupied, and obviously unhappy. Her lover was dead, and with each passing week it seemed that Two slipped further into despair. There was no cure for her ailment that Rhes could provide, no gift he could give that would lift her spirits. Two pined for the life she had been shown, that which had been given to her for the briefest of moments by this man, Theroen. He had opened a vein in her throat, drank her blood, and replaced it with his own. He had made her like him, and then he had died, and now she was alone.

  * * *

  “Why don’t you call Two and ask her if she wants to go?” Sarah had asked him, and Rhes remembered the immediate sinking feeling in his stomach. There had been a time when her suggestion wouldn’t have been needed. As soon as the decision to go had been made, Rhes would have been on the phone to invite Two. That time was long gone. They barely saw Two these days.

  “Yeah,” he said. “OK.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “Can’t say I’m looking forward to it, no.”

  “She might want to come, Rhes.” Sarah’s voice was soft, and she shrugged. “You never know …”

  “No, you never do. I’ll call, Sarah.”

  So he called, and let the phone ring. He was expecting to get her voicemail, leave a message, never get a call back; this had become standard procedure. Two never wanted to do anything at all, these days, and answering the phone seemed to rank particularly low on her list. He was surprised by the click that said someone had picked up.

  “Yeah?” her voice
was fuzzy.

  “Two? It’s Rhes. Sorry … did I wake you up?”

  Rhes glanced at the clock above the stove. Almost one.

  “Yeah. S’OK, don’t worry about it. What’s up?”

  “Sarah and I are headed out to MoMA to check out the new exhibit. Figured we’d call …”

  Rhes let the words hang, the invitation implicit.

  “Thanks, Rhes. I’m going to skip this one, though.”

  Two’s voice was dead and distant, on auto-pilot, as if she was reading the words from a cue card. It reminded him very much of speaking with her during her addiction. Against his better judgment, Rhes spoke again.

  “Look, Two … are you OK? We haven’t seen much of you lately.”

  There was a moment of silence. When Two’s voice came across the line again there was a slight chill in it. Rhes wondered whether this was an improvement over the apathy.

  “I’m fine, Rhes. Rain’s got me down, is all. I’m not ready for summer to end.”

  Me neither, Rhes thought. Out loud he asked, “You’re still sober, right?”

  Silence again, and then, “Yes, Rhes.”

  “Two …”

  “You want to come over and check for needle marks? I’ll let you.” Two’s voice was dead again.

  “No. I believe you. I just … Two, if there’s anything we can do …”

  “There’s not.”

  It was Rhes’s turn for silence. He couldn’t think of a response to this, which pretty much confirmed its truth. After a moment, without thinking, he said, “Molly misses you.”

  Two made a sound that was less a sigh than a noise dead leaves might make rattling across pavement.

  “I miss her, too,” she said, and hung up.

  Rhes looked at the phone for a moment, felt anger welling up inside of him, fought against it and lost. He slammed the phone down hard, smashing his fingers in the process, which did little to improve his mood.

  “I’m guessing that didn’t go well,” Sarah said from the living room.

  “No. No, I don’t think that ‘well’ is the word I’d use,” Rhes said. He wandered over to the fridge, got himself a beer, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Is she OK?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you OK? It’s … kind of early for beer.” Sarah was blind, but had heard the sound of the bottle opening.

  “I don’t know,” Rhes repeated.

  “Hon …”

  “Just give me a minute, Sarah! Christ.”

  Sarah gave him about ten seconds. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. I mean, she said that she didn’t want to go, and then I asked her if she was OK, and that pissed her off, or made her sad, or whatever it is she feels these days. So then I got really stupid and asked if she was still sober.”

  “Is she?”

  “Of course she is; that’s not what she wants. Anyway, she’s not going to the stupid museum. This whole call was a waste of time.”

  Sarah had gotten up and was standing in the doorway. She frowned. “Well, Jesus, Rhes, you could’ve handled it better.”

  “Really? Wow, I thought I was doing great, but God knows the expertise you’ve demonstrated lately has been amazing. In fact, wasn’t this phone call your idea in the first place?”

  “Yes, it was my idea,” Sarah replied, her voice icy, “and no, maybe I haven’t been handling her well lately … but at least I’m trying.”

  “Your trying is driving her further away.”

  “And your sitting around on your ass isn’t helping bring her back!”

  Rhes could feel the beginnings of a headache behind his temples. He didn’t want to be doing this.

  “She’s my friend,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “I don’t want to hurt her. I hate hurting her.”

  “But you can’t help her if you won’t even talk to her. If you won’t do anything … where are you going?”

  Rhes had gotten up and was crossing the kitchen. He dropped his beer bottle into the sink and headed toward their front hallway. Sarah’s head turned as she followed the sound of his movements.

  “I’m taking a walk.”

  “What about the museum?”

  “Not in the mood, Sarah,” Rhes said, pulling on his jacket. “Maybe next weekend.”

  “Great. That’s fucking great.” Sarah tossed the book she had been holding into the living room and stormed off up the stairs, still talking as she went. “Go walk and be pissed off, then. I’ll just blow my weekend sitting around doing nothing.”

  My heart bleeds, Rhes thought, but he bit his lip and stayed silent, slamming the door behind him as he left. Outside the weather was miserable but, at the moment, it seemed more appealing than staying in.

  * * *

  “You feeling any better?”

  Rhes searched the tone of Sarah’s voice for any malice, found none, and shrugged. The apartment was cool and dim; Sarah didn’t require any lights and hadn’t noticed the setting sun. Rhes pulled his shoes off in the front hallway, turned on the living room light as he entered, and flopped down on the couch.

  “Yeah, a little. I’m sorry for yelling.”

  Sarah was sitting across from him in an easy-chair. “S’OK,” she said. “I was being … a little unreasonable myself.”

  Sarah’s voice was nonchalant, but Rhes smiled to himself. It was a rare occasion when she would cede anything of the sort in their arguments, and Rhes considered it a small victory whenever it happened. He didn’t respond immediately, and the two sat in quiet for a time before Sarah sighed and spoke again.

  “What’re we going to do about her, Rhes?”

  Rhes shook his head. “I don’t know. I hate saying that, but I’ve got nothing else. I went out, I walked, and I thought about it … and I just don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything we can do for her.”

  “She’s shut us out completely … it’s even worse than before! Why won’t she let us help?”

  “How would we help? What can you do for her? What can I do for her? We don’t know anything about this.”

  Rhes closed his eyes and leaned his head back, resting it on the top edge of the couch. Finally he said, “We can’t make her into a vampire.”

  Silence fell between them, the absurdity of his final statement hanging over the room. Of course they couldn’t make her into a vampire; there were no such things as vampires, or so they had believed until Two had presented them with enough evidence to change their minds.

  There were the objects from the mansion, countless items that Two had sold in order to fund her new life. There were the records – hard to locate and to trace, but available for the right price – of Abraham and his children’s existence. There was the fact that Two had shrugged a serious heroin addiction off in a matter of weeks and seemed to have not the slightest interest in ever returning to the drug, something that Molly still struggled with on a constant basis.

  And of course there was Tori, the girl whose mind had been cracked by vampirism and who Rhes himself had watched return more and more to humanity with each passing day. Her tales of the mansion, of the things she had seen and done there, had been simultaneously fascinating and repugnant, and they had hammered home the point to Rhes and Sarah over and over again. Yes, there were vampires. Yes, Two had been among them.

  No, that didn’t make it any easier to talk about.

  Sarah finally broke the silence. “I don’t suppose we can do that for her, no.”

  “I don’t know what’s left except to let her go, but I just can’t do it. It hurts.”

  “I know, baby. I don’t want to let her go either.”

  “Maybe Tori could help her?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Who knows? Tori spent most of her time running around naked in the forest, doing things she’s pretty ashamed of. I don’t think she has quite the same impression of it all that Two has.”

  “Probably not,” Rhes said. He stood up and headed toward the kitchen. After a moment, Sa
rah followed him.

  “You want me to make dinner?” she asked.

  “I’ll do it. What do you want?”

  “First? A hug. After that, maybe spaghetti.”

  Rhes gave a small laugh, crossed the kitchen, and put his arms around Sarah. She held him tightly in her own, resting her head against his chest.

  “This sucks,” she said.

  “You’re the one who asked for it.”

  She laughed a little. “Not that. I mean this whole thing with Two. Why should we even care, Rhes? It’s not like she wants us to. She’d be happier if we didn’t.”

  “Yeah. But we care because she’s our friend, and we can’t make ourselves stop. We know who Two is when she’s healthy and … and right. We like that person a lot, and what we’re seeing now is someone else.”

  Sarah nodded, let him go, moved to the cupboard and pulled a pot from it. She walked over to the sink, filled the pot with water, set it to boil on the stove. Her spatial awareness never ceased to amaze Rhes, who had trouble crossing an open room in the dark without finding a way to hurt himself. He took a package of spaghetti from the pantry closet and laid it on the counter.

  “The person we’re seeing now is creepy,” Sarah said. “There’s some open sauce in the fridge.”

  “Thanks. Yes, it’s creepy. It’s wrong and sad and frustrating, which is why I sometimes have to bang shit around and take walks in the rain.”

  Sarah turned her head as if looking at him, an action still ingrained from her childhood, when she’d been able to see.

  “That was my fault,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it was both of our faults. And Two’s fault. And probably if I wanted to get real worked up about it, I could find a way to blame Jesus, too. But it doesn’t really matter … it’s just a touchy subject because we don’t have any answers.”

  “Maybe we should stop letting her close us out. I dunno … maybe go talk to her in person, grab her by the shoulders, slap her around. Make her realize there’s still a whole world out here and that she should stop living with the dead.”