by Garon Whited
Sasha led me past reception and into an elevator.
“What was that?” I asked.
She smiled, slightly. “With practice, you can learn to sense things within the spirit. One may pick and choose what to drain. I took from her the… concept of our being. Not her memory, exactly… but she was unable to see us and will be unable to even conceive that we exist for a while.”
I tried to keep the horrified look off my face. Sasha had just eaten a piece of someone’s mind. Maybe I’m being hypocritical, but that just pushes all the wrong buttons with me. My mind is me. Nobody fools with it. It’s wrong to mess with someone’s head, to change them! Kill me if you must, shoot me if you feel like it—I’ll return the favor. But mess with my head? That’s where I keep all my most important stuff!
I tried not to shudder.
“How long does it last?” I asked, trying to keep my voice quiet, to act like it was a clinical question. If this was a permanent thing, we were going to have a long, long talk right there in the elevator.
“It depends on how hard you draw on it. It is… like… squeezing your wrist to put your hand to sleep. Squeeze for a little while and it merely fades a bit. Squeeze harder and it will go completely numb. Squeeze hard enough and long enough and it will go completely limp. Do that even more and it will die forever.”
“We can do that?” I asked, feeling queasy. I don’t like the idea of reaching into someone’s mind and… and… altering it. Drinking down their whole being? Swallowing their blood? Devouring their life-force? Eating their soul? No problem. But to reach in and tweak their selves… It’s one thing to kill a man. It’s another thing to break his mind.
That shudder finally escaped.
“Oh, yes,” she went on, not noticing. “You can learn to eliminate many things from a human’s heart. Fear, joy, sorrow, love… almost anything. But you devour it, make no mistake; you will feel some small portion of it. I am somewhat self-conscious right now, and I am very aware you are with me.” She took my hand and held it tightly. “And I am glad you are.”
“I am pleased to be here,” I replied, trying to shake the nauseous feeling in my soul.
She nodded and leaned close to me; I put my arm around her and held her.
The elevator stopped; the doors opened. We stepped out and went down the hall to a waiting area. A few people were there, even at this hour. Two men and three women, obviously not all together. One of the women looked like she hadn’t slept for some time. The men both needed to shave.
“What now?” I asked, quietly.
“Sit.”
We sat. Sasha still held my hand and I could feel the slow uncoiling of her spirit into mine. I welcomed it in and touched hers. That was a huge act of trust on my part, especially after what she’d just told me. My mind is mine and I’d sooner share my underwear. We spoke then with intimate feelings and urgings, but without words. It was a touching of our inner selves, a joining of her soul and mine, if you will. If we were to put it into words…
Come with me.
Where are we going?
Walk with me and feed.
On who?
Those who long for us.
So I felt her uncoiling, and I stretched my dark reach out, coiling out with her through walls and plastic plants and hard chairs. Tendrils touched on people—nurses, a doctor, the visitors…
A sick man. Ill unto death, struggling to live.
A hurt woman. Broken and bloodied inside, held together with thread and glue and staples, supported somewhat by machines and even more by her will to live.
A child. Sick and wasted, but awake and delighting in cartoons.
A man—ah… tendrils coiled into him, searching. He was in the final stages of his cancer… it had metastasized, rogue cells circulating in his blood, latching on everywhere, spreading like a fungus in a cellar. Everywhere was in pain, a whole world of it, but especially the places he had been opened to have cancers cut away. He was more than just tired, he was exhausted. The drugs to kill the pain could not do so without killing him; they could only dull his pain and his intellect with it. He was waiting to die.
Sasha drew his life out, slowly, gently. I could see how she touched him… the parts that thought, first. They leaked away down the channels she laid out, flowing to her like bright water. I could see it didn’t hurt; it looked like he was falling asleep. Then she worked her way down from the highest places, draining each in turn, carefully, until she reached the root, the life-spark itself, flickering dim and wan in the depths of his husk. She took it and consumed it and he was gone.
I found I was blinking back bloody tears. I blotted at my eyes with a tissue—the waiting area had lots—and kept it hidden. Reddish stains cause talk.
It made me think, too. I’d killed people recently. More than one, and on more than one occasion. Did that bother me? The first one was somebody I never even knew—but knew him in the moment of his passing. Then there were the men at Travis’ place… and, tonight, three men who were trying to kill Sasha and me. Did these bother me?
No, I decided. I remembered the man I had devoured, and I hated the men who had hurt my friend, and the men that had tried to kill my Sasha. No remorse, and only a little regret.
But this… this was not something I had to do. It was something I felt, very intently, I was supposed to do. This was how someone was supposed to die when I came near them. To die peacefully and without pain—indeed, to have pain taken from them.
That was the purpose of my kind: to be the doorway out of life when it was time to go.
Do you know your function? How many people do, I wonder? But at that moment, I saw what I was. A vampire, yes… and one that understood what vampires are for. Wolves bring down the weak of the herd to keep it strong. Vampires do that for humans, too… but, having once been human, we have souls. We are more than just predators; we also have compassion and pity—and, yes, love for our prey.
Sasha was still linked with me as I realized this, listening and feeling, and she smiled, eyes brimming redly. I could feel her understanding and her love for me. I think I really accepted, right then, that she did love me, not just some long-dead man in the mountains of southern France. And I loved her.
You can reach everywhere.
I can’t see where I’m reaching.
You can feel your way.
How?
Follow the walls and floors and in time you will learn to not need them.
I had my touching spirit-coils flow over the walls and floors, like spreading rivulets in a wind, coiling like the vines of a creeping plant up the legs of chairs, over equipment, over and through the staff and the patients…
Pain, sickness, misery… but desire for life… hunger for living… the need to survive… there the quiet despair and agony of the dying…
I touched, slid over… his spirit… felt him coughing blood… six floors down, in the emergency room with knife wounds in his chest… the pain of the loss of wife and son… the despair and the wish to escape it all… the kitchen knife and the movements… not even a decision… just an inevitable result…
He quieted as I drew gently on the higher places of his spirit, the consciousness of thought and feeling. He ceased to think, mind cycling down into a quiet lassitude, and I could feel that pain, a shadow of it, and knew I too might long for death if I were as lost and alone. I understood his pain. I worked deeper, as I had seen Sasha do, tugging lightly at layer after layer, peeling his life away gently, eating each one and tasting its joys, its cruelties, its triumphs and its failures.
At the last, there was only the spark of his living body that remained, and it strained to reach out, to touch the darkness that flowed in and around him. I wrapped it in a web of black tendrils and it came free of his flesh, vanishing into me.
I stood up, fulfilled and at peace. I helped Sasha up and we walked out of the hospital. Death was content.
Sunrise was a living hell. We both writhed and twisted in the darkness of a deep r
oom in the house. All that regenerating came back to demand its price on mortal flesh. We sweated yellow-grey foulness, convulsed and shivered in misery. If anything had been in our stomachs, I’m sure we would have lost it. We dry-heaved until we choked on our own throats. We could feel muscles quivering like the strings of a violin or the cables of a bridge in a high wind.
When it was over, we lay there, panting, stinking, half-choked and waiting for the twitching to stop. It did, several minutes later, and I lifted myself on my arms.
“Is it always that bad?” I rasped. I sounded like a marathon winner at the finish line. Felt like one, too.
“Always, when you have been sorely wounded,” she answered, not bothering to rise.
“Reason enough to avoid it. And if we’d still been wounded when the sunrise came?”
“You can die from wounds not yet healed.”
I nodded. “Let’s clean up and call a contractor.”
“After a nap,” she agreed. “And breakfast. And a shower.”
“In reverse order.”
“Fireworks are touchy things, sometimes.”
The supervisor—Ted—looked over the burned and blasted front face of the house. In daylight, it looked worse than it was, but it still wasn’t good. A large portion of the front had burned, and several holes in the wall gaped like acne in the front face—overshots from the spray of explosive bullets. I had driven around in the yard to put tire-track slashes at the scene and obscure footprints, then built a bonfire in the grass. I claimed I had foolishly—and drunkenly—decided to build a bonfire for a weenie roast and tossed a box of miscellaneous fireworks into it.
“Only when you light ’em,” he observed. “Ever thought you need a keeper?”
I shrugged. “I’ve considered it. But she was out last night.”
Ted shook his head. “Well, we can get the front face fixed fairly fast. The holes are going to take a little longer, unless you want the whole façade taken off and replaced. At least the busted windows are no problem. What else was there?”
“I was interested in a fire extinguisher system. And some aluminum siding.”
“No problem. I get a lot of demand for that—antique houses like this don’t always age well, and the siding keeps ’em in good shape quite a while.”
I looked at the men and ladders as they cut away portions of the house. “Yes, absolutely. When do you think we can get on that?”
“We can get most of the structural work and the paint done today, no problem. The siding we can get to work on tomorrow. The extinguisher will need a lot of poking around inside and some details worked out—but I can get a guy out here to do most of the footwork today.”
“Good. Do it. I’ve got some insulation for the siding on order. New stuff. So get the groundwork on that, too—but carry on with the fire extinguisher.”
Ted rubbed his jaw. He was a long, lean man with a calculating eye. “This is going to be expensive, you know. It’s a big house, and halon isn’t cheap.”
I nodded. “I know, but the wife has some antique furniture in there. Water damage or fire damage, it’d still be shot. Give me a quote this afternoon and I’ll negotiate with you. Perhaps you’d like to join us for dinner to discuss it? My wife would love to hear about the home improvements.”
“Wife?”
“Yes. She’s inside, doing some internet shopping. We decided we needed a new car, so she’s looking over some imports.”
Ted eyed me again, obviously considering that—and liking the thought. I could almost see dollar signs whirling around his head.
“Sure. What time?”
“About seven. We’ve got some things to do in town.”
“Fine.”
I left him out there and went inside. Sasha was looking over the details of covert armored cars on the Web. The graphics were taking some time to load, but the cable installer was due today, along with the cable modem. She was looking forward to it.
“My lord? Have you seen what they can do with a pickup truck?”
“Hmm?”
I looked it over. It was a nice-looking truck with a closed-in bed. It was also impervious to an AK-47, had blinding lights, tear gas dispensers, electrified exterior, oil and smoke dispensers, and a retractile .50-caliber Browning machine gun. It also got about twenty-six miles to the gallon on puncture-proof tires and had a top speed of slightly over one-twenty.
“How much do they want for it?” I asked, interested despite myself.
“It’s a concept vehicle. I’m not sure it’s for sale. But these companies offer cars and SUV’s that look perfectly normal, except they’ve been redone…”
I looked. I was impressed. The wreckage of a car after two shoulder-mounted missile hits was ugly… but apparently the occupant survived with only minor wounds.
“Want to sell the cars we have and buy some new ones?”
“After last night, my lord? That is a jest, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. Order them. Once they get here, we’ll get rid of the old ones. Oh, and we’re having the contractor for dinner, tonight.”
She smiled at me, eyes fluttering, teasing. “Oh, thank you. He looks tasty.”
“Over to have dinner, I should say. I intend to persuade him to avoid gouging us.”
“We are wealthy, my lord.”
“And one stays that way by not spending it all.”
“A point. But wealth does not solve all problems, my lord.”
I clicked on the body armor site I had bookmarked earlier. Concealed synthetic spider silk vests. Quite nice.
“No,” I agreed, “but it changes them into problems that can be solved.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9TH
I went in to the university and let them know I was going on an extended leave of absence; I might not make it back, but I’d keep them posted. They didn’t like it. Nuts to them. The administration is just there to make life difficult, anyway. I felt bad about dumping my students, though. Even as I was doing it, I knew I was going to miss them. I don’t much care for the administration, but I love teaching. My students are interesting and interested; that’s what makes teaching fun. As it is, Archie will probably take over my classes.
Ick. Poor kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with Archie… he’s just so… so… boring. So dry. Monotone. Having him for an instructor is like watching broccoli grow, but less entertaining. He would never show up with overalls and pushcart, pretending to be a curious janitor. He wouldn’t stand by the door and hand out super-cooled candy roses on Valentine’s day.
Poor kids. I hate having to leave them like that, but I won’t have them nearby when some lunatic throws a bomb at me.
Back home, I studied magic in my off moments. Sasha and I both shopped. We redid the house almost to the frame—and even the framing in spots. It still looks like a fine old example of an expanded colonial home. It’s a fortress. And that makes me edgy.
It’s been nearly two months, and the Fist hasn’t so much as lobbed a Molotov cocktail at us. I’m certain they haven’t forgotten us; they’ve lost too many men and too much equipment to take us lightly. I have the feeling when they come back—and they will, I’m sure of it—they will not be fooling around with a mere assassination. I have mental images of a full-fledged military assault on the house. And the concern it might work.
They won’t find it easy. There are a lot of nonflammable gases that are also toxic, and a halon system can be rigged to draw from other pressure bottles besides the halon tanks. For example, there’s something called vomit gas, used for riot control, and it goes right through a gas mask. Once you toss your cookies in there, the mask is pretty much useless. If it’s mixed with something like, oh, mustard gas or tear gas, someone is going to be in for a bad day.
Sasha and I will get better. Normal people won’t. I wonder what effect nerve gas has on a vampire? Not that I’ve managed to make any contacts that can get nerve gas, but I keep my ears open. There are people in the chemistry department who used to work f
or the military.
There are fire extinguishers in every room, and everything semi-permanent—drapes, couches, carpet—has been treated with a fire retardant. The siding is up over the resin-bonded Kevlar “insulation.” The motion sensors and the infrared scanners are all emplaced and tied in to the security system. The windows have been replaced with double-paned bulletproof windows, with security locks. I’ve bought a trio of hostile, nasty, well-trained attack dogs and introduced them to the house and grounds—it took one night and some training, but they got the message about who was boss in no uncertain terms. I also didn’t use any single security company; I tasked out specific jobs to different companies. Anything I could install myself, I did.
There’s a whole lot more, but I won’t go into it.
When I said the house was a fortress, I wasn’t kidding around.
So, by stages, I relaxed. Mostly. At the back of my mind I knew the Fist wasn’t done, but aside from keeping a little caution in mind, I pretty much left them to their own devices. When Sasha and I went out in the evening to feed, we did so in a car that looked perfectly normal, but was such a marvel of high-tech defenses a tank would have to shoot it twice and then run over it to kill the occupants. We exercised all caution and precaution while we were out of the house; when we returned, we checked everything carefully before relaxing again in our safe haven.
But I kept expecting that quiet click in the lock, or the faint spark of a wire being crossed to bypass security. I hated it, but what could I do about it? Chase them down and beat them up? Chase who down? Where? It’s rather pointless to go checking in the phone book! “Hunters: Vampire.” No listing. I looked.
So what was I to do? Not a lot. Just sit and take it, mainly. But it’s hard to get any fun out of life at all when you’re on guard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s impossible to enjoy yourself when you know someone is just waiting for the chance to kill you. It rankled, and I worked on doing something about it.