“We were interrupted.”
“The missing campers.”
“Yes. She attacked them. I couldn’t stop her.”
After seeing Heather attack that woman at the hospital, I had no problems visualizing her lash out at innocents stumbling on a vampire-in-the-making. Wait. That meant...
“She knew you before?”
Krit nodded once. “We met in the park. At first, I only spoke with her on occasion but I fell for her.”
I knew what happened when a human was at the receiving end of a vampire’s love. They died, or became one. This big motherfucker was in love–had been in love–with a human. I frowned. The letter I’d found on the dresser in her old room. “S.” Seskrit. It was all making sense.
“Jesus. Did you at least make it an informed decision?”
He nodded again. “We were acquainted for many years.”
It was damned ironic that an ex-girlfriend of mine ended up with a vampire. A fucking Nesfer, though? Ugh. The back door slammed, and I perked up. Silvia was coming out to check on me, no doubt.
“Where’s your truck, Krit? I’ll show you where Heather is at.”
He turned and pointed into the darkness. “Parked on the road.”
“Okay, so down from her mailbox?”
“Yes.”
“Oh hey, Krit? I’m sorry to have to do this.”
He started to turn around but I slammed the flashlight into the back of his head. He crumpled to the ground. I bent to retrieve the gun I’d lost.
Evil lived in me somewhere–I’d seen it enough–but I actually felt bad about holding a conversation with an unarmed man then braining him when his back was turned. I tucked the slightly dented flashlight in my back pocket and wrapped my arms under his, hefting his weight up against my chest. His head was bleeding, but I knew he’d be all right. It took way more than a simple concussion to put a vampire down.
“What is this?” Silvia startled me from behind. For an older lady, and human at that, she was damned quiet.
I turned to eyeball her and gave out a nervous laugh. “I told him not to drink so much.”
“Who is this?”
“Friend of mine. He decided to use your garage for a toilet.” I turned a little more toward her but kept Krit mostly out of view. She might be able to see the blood in the floodlight. She might think the blood was just shadow play.
She blinked and frowned. “He confused my garage for a toilet? What was he doing in there?”
I shrugged. “You got me, but I better get him home. His truck is up at the end of your driveway. Can I leave my bike here?”
“Of course but–”
“I want to get him out of here in case he starts puking or something.” Dammit, Silvia, just fucking buy it.
She took a step back at the prospect of getting spewed on. “He’s all right then? You’re sure?”
“Yup.” I hefted him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, as Dad used to say. Krit was broad, but not as tall as me. Hell, no one really was without being in the fucking NBA. “I’m going to take him home.”
She folded her arms across her chest. With the sun gone, the night air temperature was dropping like a rock. I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket to give back to her, but she shook her head.
“You’ll need it to get out to his truck.”
I smirked and forced it into a grateful smile. “Right, I didn’t think of that.”
“No mountain lions, then?”
I snorted. “Nope, just this asshole. I’ll get out of your hair for now.”
I started walking around to the front of the house to get to her driveway.
“Be careful, Gabriel,” she called faintly.
I’d need luck, because when this fucker woke up, he’d probably be pissed. I made double-time back up the long drive, passing my motorcycle. Krit’s truck was right where he said it would be. A quick check of his jeans pockets produced a set of keys. I propped him up in the passenger side and buckled him in. The truck was an ancient thing, and had a cranky start. I went for the gearshift and realized it was a three-speed. It’d been a while since I’d seen one. Muscle memory had it right as we headed back into town, Krit groaning in the seat next to me.
About a quarter of the way back, Krit came to. He moaned a little before going rigid, his eyes taking in the interior of the truck.
“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.” I raised a gun to his temple, but kept my eyes on the road. “Pretty sure you don’t want brains all over the inside of this nice pickup. I know you damn sure don’t want to end up with half a brain like Jackie-boy.”
The Jackal was a deranged individual but not from pure insanity. A log truck with an unsecured load had sent massive tree trunks rolling across the hood of his Trans Am about ten years back. They found him and what was left of the car in a ravine after he’d driven off the high road. He was tended to while he healed, but they found out that brain damage is pretty permanent, at least for a Nesferata.
I felt Krit nod against the muzzle. “You have my word.”
“Good.”
“Why did you hit me?”
“Protecting the human.” I shrugged.
“Silvia Redhouse. Why would I harm Heather’s sister?”
“I don’t know that, do I?” I sighed. “I don’t know you. In fact, I’m going to reunite you with your honey, and then I’m going home to my own mess.” I lowered the gun, mainly because I was coming up on my turn and needed to shift.
“What happened to you?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I growled. He was nice, and it made me nervous.
“It was you that brought it up.”
“Jesus, shut up.” I pulled my pack of cigarettes of out my pocket, lit one and rolled down the window. Cold desert wind filled the cab.
“I knocked you out because Silvia’s been through enough. She doesn’t need to deal with vampires, or whatever you Nesfers are.”
“But you are also unnatural.”
I ignored him. “I came here when I found out Heather was dead, with fang marks.”
“I should have stayed with her.”
“You did fine, given the circumstances. The only other thing you could have done was take her corpse with you. As it turned out, she wasn’t dead anyway.”
“I was trying to remove the other bodies. I didn’t know anything was wrong with her. I know the rules of our kind.”
I snorted. “Our kind? I’m surprised they teach anything resembling order and structure in Nesferata school.”
He fell silent and appeared to be thinking. “You do not like the Nesferata.”
“Wow, you catch on fast.”
“Why not?” His stare burned into the right side of my face. “You are the undead one. Is that it? That we still have life?”
I didn’t answer. We were not having a heart to heart. I don’t know why he cared about what the hell I thought about him or his race.
“You’re Xan Marcelles.” My stage name rolled between us and was whipped out by the wind. “You’re Zeta’s–”
“Shut the fuck up before I shoot you in the goddamned mouth.”
Krit was reasonable and smart. In fact, I think it was his whole air of civility that fucked with me the worst. Nesfers were supposed to be like animals. Big, dumb animals. He carried the structure of one but talked like a regular person. I swatted away my curiosity of his background. We didn’t have time for this. But, after having met both him and Nin, there seemed to be hope for their kind. I tugged the rubber tubing I’d stolen from the hospital from under my waistband and tossed it at him.
“Hold that for me.” I flicked the cigarette out my window to turn into the motel parking lot. “Give me any shit, Krit, and I’ll make you a fucking blood stain. I’ll scrape you off the pavement to feed to your new made. Got it?”
He nodded once and we got out of the truck.
I dug into my pocket for the room key. “She’s been cuffed to the toilet for a few hours so I’m pretty sure s
he’s starving.”
“What are your intentions?”
“You’re gonna finish what you started with her. You’re gonna give her some of your blood.”
“You cannot let her infect me.” Krit followed me in.
“I’ll do my best.”
My room light was still on, but the door was unlocked. I drew my weapon.
“Stay here.” I eased the door open. The room looked normal and welcoming, but there was a sharp tang in the air. I crept toward the bathroom door. It was closed. I opened it to reveal Heather feasting on what was left of housekeeping. The sight and smell of the blood in the tub, on the tile and in the sink opened a dark jar inside of me. My senses snapped to high definition.
“Heather,” I managed to say, and she shifted her attention to me. Her eyes were cataracted with a milky sheen and her face was mottled to shit. She bared her jagged teeth and let out an inhuman growl. I recognized the sound. It was the same sound that zombie-vampire thing of Freddie’s had made. Her wrist was still cuffed, but she swung at me with her free arm, fingers terminating in curved, talon-like claws. Oh. Fuck. She was undoubtedly headed toward a very bad state–was pretty much there, really–and my time to do anything to save her was rapidly running the hell out.
“Is it safe?” Krit called from the door to the outside.
I leaned back. “Go ahead and bolt the door. She’s bad.” I left her for a minute to empty my pockets of phlebotomy supplies out over the busy pattern of the nearest full-size bed in front of him. “She’s turning into one of those Wretched things.” I shook my head and forced myself to focus on the task at hand, pushing doubt and regret away as far as I could from my mind. “I guess you wouldn’t happen to know how to use any of this.”
“I do some, the rest I can figure out.”
We heard Heather in the bathroom, tearing into her evening meal again. Our eyes met over the bed and, in that light, his were the brilliant green of the typical Nesferata male. His nostrils flared and his pulse picked up.
“Don’t vamp out on me, Krit.”
He swallowed hard. “I’m more concerned about you.”
He was right. I turned and dropped on the bed, keeping my gun close. The wet, smacking sounds and tearing flesh seemed ten times louder, echoing around in my brain. My breaths were shallow, but my heart was galloping. Damn those urges. Krit worked a needle into his vein and kept his arm outstretched as he gave me instructions on how to draw the blood. His blood was red. Bright red like the living, not black red like mine. Our differences continued to amaze me. He wore a nervous grin and his fangs were down. He was struggling too.
I combined the draws by sucking them up into the vial of one big hypodermic syringe. The needle was about three inches long and made me cringe.
Heather looked up when I went back into the bathroom, syringe in hand. Her chin was a bloody, frothing mess. She shrieked like something out of Alien and lunged at me. I knocked her back into the small space between the bathtub and toilet, pinning her free arm under my knee as I straddled her chest to inject her. Seconds after the needle found her vein, she stopped struggling and her color improved a little.
“I think it’s working.” I loosened my grip on her.
Krit was already at the doorway. His face softened as he laid eyes on someone he thought he’d lost. “Only for a little while. It’s too late.”
I excused myself from the scene when Heather and Krit locked gazes and he hesitated. “Just a little while. Please,” he asked.
He looked like he was about to cry. I guess Nesferata were acquainted with the Wretched. At least he and Nin seemed to be. I couldn’t imagine dealing with this every day. She wasn’t going to make it. The little half-assed transfusion was just a temporary reprieve, something to give her one last show of humanity before her brain gave way and she went the way of all other Wretched.
She didn’t have long. She already had the claws and sharp teeth–and I’m not just talking fangs, but an entire mouthful of them. It wasn’t right, dragging this shit out on her, but I had to give her every chance she deserved. I stood next to the bed, just staring at the wall. There was a print of some bowl of fruit, but I wasn’t looking at it. I was thinking of what good had come out of me being here. It was going to end up the same regardless.
I sat on the bed and picked up the gun I’d left there. It felt heavy somehow. I gritted my teeth and sat back against the headboard and listened halfway to Krit and Heather in the next room. She was crying and apologizing, and Krit was talking in a low voice and saying he was sorry too. Truth was, we were all sorry, and would only get sorrier. I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes.
Man, it sucked so bad, and we still had some dead woman in my bathroom.
I asked Krit for Nin’s phone number.
“Don’t call her, please.” His face reflected the desperation in his voice.
“I can’t handle this shit on my own, and I’d be careful getting all cuddly with...her.” Heather’d gone lethargic and Krit was tenderly stroking her hair, crying and shit. I shook my head at the pathetic couple and dialed Nin to let her know I had her boy. She didn’t say much, just kind of hung up in my ear and showed at my door ten minutes later.
She glared at my gun in her face. I lowered it. I stepped back to let her in.
“There’s blood on your shirt, Xan.”
“Shit.” She watched me with dark eyes as I switched it out for another black t-shirt from the stolen laundry pile. I know she smelled the mess in the bathroom, but she waited for me to reveal it at my own pace. Totally unexpected of her usual demeanor.
When I’d had enough of her eyeing me, I gestured toward the bathroom.
“Your boy’s in there. Pretty sure, anyway.”
She went to the door and looked at the grisly-lovey scene for a long time before speaking. “You need to kill her, Xan.”
“Is that the one you’ve been hunting?” I meant Krit.
She nodded quickly, tearing her gaze away with obvious difficulty. “He made her because they wanted to be together.” Sure, it made sense. Not like vamps weren’t doing dumb shit the world over. Nin just nodded and looked really upset for a fraction of a second.
I finally got it. “He’s yours, isn’t he?”
She stood still, like only vampires could do, then her gaze rose to meet mine. Slowly, she nodded.
It made sense all of a sudden–this connection of Krit to Nin, and I was sorry I hadn’t figured it out earlier. She stood there with her arms crossed and eyes flashing with anger, and I actually felt bad for her. Despite knowing she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
“And this would be his first, wouldn’t it.”
She nodded again. I could pretty much guess what was going through her head. Krit had broken a lot of rules because he loved Heather. He loved Heather and not Nin. Sires usually were kind of fond of what they created–to the point of even loving their made-ones.
“He’s been away for some time,” she said after a few dozen beats. “He left without reason, and without permission. And now I can see precisely why.”
“Does a Nesferata sire have a connection...”
“Yes, we do.” She blinked and shook her head. “Did. I should have known something was different, but he’s the only one I have.”
“Well, at least you can rest easy knowing he hasn’t gone nuts on a public killing spree–”
Her arm shot out, interrupting me midsentence, and pressed against my chest. Light, like a real girl. “Don’t. Don’t justify this. It’s not your place.”
“We should wake them before we lose her again.” I didn’t move away from her hand. It was hot resting there, like a branding iron. I studied her face instead.
She looked everywhere but at me. She shifted her weight and let her fingers slide down to my belt, then to her side. She hung her head. This revelation had clearly fucked with her.
“I’m sorry about your friend.” She went into the bathroom and kicked Krit’s foot. His eyes
opened slowly, then went wide as he crammed himself into the side of the tub best he could. She spoke to him in a language I didn’t understand, but the tone was clear.
Time’s up.
He made to stand up and slipped a little in the blood, jostling Heather.
Nin took one of his arms about the same time Heather sank her teeth in the other forearm. Her eyes opened. They were completely white. Krit cried out and I aimed at and shot Heather in the forehead, the report of my pistol deafening in that small space. Her blood splattered on Krit and he jerked.
Nin drew her huge knife and hacked off his limb just below the elbow, pulling him free. Krit screamed. Heather’s ruined head–with Krit’s arm still firmly clamped in her jagged teeth–slumped backward. Her brains leaked from the gaping hole in her skull like the cream in a Cadbury egg, except squirming and jellylike. I choked back a gag and jerked both Nin and Krit out of there, closing the door behind us.
“Wretched don’t heal.” I swallowed hard to keep my gorge from rising again. “Do they?”
Nin was busy wrapping Krit’s new stump with my old bloodstained t-shirt. She held out her big knife to me, handle-first. “No, but you need to go in there and finish the job.” Krit was still shuddering and screaming at interval.
“She’s still alive, Xan.”
I took Nin’s knife from her and opened the door. Heather was twitching violently and Krit’s detached arm was feeling along the floor, fingers spreading and flexing like some macabre tarantula. I stepped over it and took her blood-matted hair in my hand. She gurgled and growled, striking out blindly. I swung the blade hard, and grimaced as her head came free of her body, leaving it dangling from my clenched fist. I dropped both it and the knife; my shaking fingers were coated with her black, oily blood.
It was over.
I backed out of the blood-splattered bathroom, mindful of slipping in the mess coating the floor. Heather’s headless form emitted a sort of advanced decay smell, something between old cheese, bad gas and stale used teabags. I doubt the living could even really detect much at all yet, but it was a firm reminder that I had some serious cleaning to do. The stench of death from the cleaning lady’s corpse was overpowering. I halfway attempted to rinse the soles of my boots and wash my hands off in the sink, but it wasn’t that big of a deal–Krit had already left bloody footprints on the carpet. Speaking of Krit, he was rocking back and forth, holding what was left of his right arm with his left hand. His eyes were empty and he was murmuring stuff I couldn’t understand. I don’t think he was talking to anybody in particular anyway.
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