“Naturally,” he said, “I checked in with him.”
Paul stirred in a seat that had seemed comfortable when the endless evening had begun. “What do you mean, you checked in with him? You went back?”
Drake gave his host a sharp, penetrating stare. “I won’t tell you all of our secrets, but we have ways of knowing things that you wouldn’t even begin to understand.”
“We have ways of knowing…”
Paul’s eyes once more flitted to the second-story balcony beyond the doorway where one might listen in comparative secrecy.
However the feat was accomplished, Drake “saw” his old friend the following day.
“If there hadn’t been so many men, so many dogs, he’d not have been taken. But fortune hadn’t been with him and they now had him chained like an animal to a long stake pounded deep into the mud cellar floor. He’d been beaten and the hounds had taken a taste. That I’d seen earlier, but by this time I saw nearly flawless flesh as he lay there in the dirt, his clothing all but torn from his body. I could imagine the whispered rumors that would make the rounds of pig farms and chicken-wire shacks when Frederick’s self-styled jailers viewed that smooth, unbruised face.
“His eyes were closed as I floated above him, but I knew he was watching my prostrate form as carefully as I watched his. Then my attention was diverted by the angry crowd gathering outside the makeshift prison, and I knew where events were leading.”
Drake took a deep breath. Released it. And continued.
“The constable—I believe that was the term used for their part-time lawman—was more courageous and level-headed than I’d expected. I overheard him telling the crowd that he’d telegraphed the parish sheriff and had been promised a detail in the morning to pick up the prisoner. But as events progressed, it looked as though they’d arrive too late. I prayed to whichever gods consider the prayers of vampires that what was to happen would wait till sundown.”
A single beep sounded, an electronic trill. Darby’s confounded timepiece. Digital numbers in a soft shade of lavender indicated the time as, not twelve-thirty as he’d suspected, but one o’clock. He’d missed the half-hour trill and it had been a full hour since last he’d considered the time of night. His world—his very concept of physics and reality—had been upended in the space of an hour.
“Maybe our particular god was listening after all,” Drake said, flippantly. “At any rate, I awoke at sundown figuring the issue was probably decided and my best friend most likely dead. But the daylighters who’d watched from the water oaks told me otherwise. I joined them under the moonlight to see that the crowd had tripled in size from the previous day as word had gotten out to the outlying farmers and travelers. They carried torches, lanterns and guns. They threw rocks and issued threats to the constable who’d refused to turn Frederick over to them, and I silently egged them on.”
“What’s that?” Paul said as a crack in the story brought in a little light from the outside world. “I guess I missed your last comment.”
The vampire smiled. “No you didn’t. You heard better than you give yourself credit. I egged them on. Keep listening and you’ll understand.
“I said that the constable appeared to be a good and courageous man, and that’s true to the extent that he held out all of that day and half the night before losing control of my chained friend.”
“Couldn’t you have…done something?” Paul asked.
“Could we have marshaled our forces and gone to war against these swamp creatures? Yes, perhaps. But our numbers had been so depleted that the outcome against fists, clubs, shotguns and dogs would have been very much in doubt. But it mattered little at that point. Listen on.
“We watched and laughed softly among ourselves as we watched Frederick being dragged from his prison, pushed and shoved ahead of the crowd. His face had been freshly bruised and battered, all marks that would have cleared up in little time, but his expression of blind panic was sincere. Frederick had always been like that, a scurrying chipmunk of a man with an eye open for danger at all times, though less so after Amanda’s death. That he could take the risks he took attested more to his lack of self-control than to confidence or courage.
“The swamp creatures pulled and prodded and shoved and dragged him onto the back of a horse and sallied forth like a midnight parade, heading straight toward us. At the last minute, we realized that they meant to use that very copse for their purposes, and we quickly slipped away to what we hoped was a safer patch of trees.”
Drake paused. “You’ve probably seen lynchings dramatized in film or on television. But in real life it’s much more barbarous. When the actors do it, they play the scene for outrage, for brutal, selfish justice. Real-life lynchings, on the other hand, provide the common man with an electric thrill unlike anything they’ve ever hoped to witness. They enjoy themselves immensely.
“Let me explain, Paul. The act of dragging Frederick out of the cellar and onto the back of a horse had stripped him of most of his clothing, giving the boys and even a handful of bold women accompanying the mob a thin and battered body to snicker and jeer at. They spilled him repeatedly from the horse, the children threw rocks and the men stomped him and dribbled foamy spit upon him.
“We were no longer smiling as we watched in hiding. This was too much. He’d survive, but it would take his body quite some time to heal from this outrage.
“The man with the foresight to bring a rope first used it like a bullwhip to lash at naked flesh till Frederick barely had the strength to writhe in pain. We heard discussions on the removals of his genitals, it being falsely assumed that the young victim had been murdered to satisfy Frederick’s earthly lust. Fortunately, such retribution was considered indelicate with ladies and children present.
“I watched them, Paul,” the vampire said, staring at a point beyond his host’s head as if watching the offenders still. “I memorized every face and in my most carrying whisper ordered the vampires and daylighters in my charge to do the same. I vowed that we’d be back, and Frederick would lead the assault.
“In due time, the rope was slung over a low limb and the other end tied to the neck of their victim, whose blood and fear perhaps even the daylighters among us could smell from our position a hundred yards away. He had, at this point, been mounted again on the back of the horse. ‘Play dead,’ I whispered. We’d rehearsed this countless times, under Frederick’s direction, but I didn’t know how he’d act when the time actually came. If he panicked…
“But he didn’t. He was perfect. His body twitched spasmodically, but he didn’t overdo it. I felt it played well, as did the others. We released a collective sigh of relief and I accepted words of congratulations from the others. It sounds odd, but it seemed natural to be praised for the accomplishments of my partner, as he would have been praised for mine. We were like that, Paul. We’d been together for seventeen unforgettable years by then, in a relationship much deeper than lovers. I carried his thought and he carried mine. It was as if—”
The vampire interrupted himself with a low growl of annoyance. He drained his water glass and stared at it as if contemplating another. He leaned forward and placed the glass on the very center of the table, then looked up with eyes that glittered with rage.
“In the clear moonlight we saw the profile of his body, hanging limp and lifeless,” said the vampire in a tone as slack as his friend. “‘Perfect,’ I told those around me, and together we watched someone in the crowd spray him from water with a bucket, apparently to make sure he couldn’t be revived. Once more I sent him a mental reminder to stay still, stay still.
“Only, it was as though he’d forgotten all that we’d rehearsed. His body began to twitch again, to quiver, then to thrash violently at the end of his tethering rope as panic overtook him. Who knew? Maybe the cold water had been a shock to his system and had broken his self-control. He screamed. I heard him scream my name. ‘Miles!’ he said. Or tried to, through the rope constricting his words. Shocked at his outbu
rst, I muttered for the fool to stay quiet. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Paul croaked. His heart slammed his ribcage as all hope dwindled for the child-murdering night creature. Darby’s goddamn electronic clock beeped again, but he ignored it.
“I smelled it in the wind moments later.”
“Smelled what?” Paul demanded in a barely audible whisper.
“I told you these men and boys carried lanterns, didn’t I? And torches.”
“Gasoline,” Paul whispered.
“Close enough. Kerosene.”
“Kerosene,” repeated the vampire’s daughter, the single word a condemnation of all humankind like herself.
Miles Drake shrugged. “He became a torch. Frederick lit the night sky with his brutalized, cindering body and with his screams.”
The old man—the creature—began to knead his knees with gnarled hands as he’d done minutes or hours before.
Paul worked at almost physically pushing the lynching scene from his mind. He had to regain some semblance of perspective. “Yes, but…he was your friend, but…he did kill small children,” he said with almost plaintive tact.
“Yes,” the vampire boomed as he sprang from the sofa with the limber grace of a man half his apparent age. “Yes,” he said again, pacing. “We must be perfectly candid here and acknowledge that the vampire Frederick Darrow did indeed suck the life from small children and drunks and low-life others and even from the occasional lady with purse. Yes, he was kind and loyal and a wonderful lifemate to my beloved daughter and a dear friend to me, but there was that bloodthirst thing.”
The vampire strolled out of the living room and into the foyer and to the dining room across it. Paul followed meekly to find him cocking one leg on a straight-back chair. Drake twirled to face him.
“Remember this above all else, Paul. These are not fairly tales I’m telling you tonight. The good witches don’t wear white and the evil ones black. You wish to deal with me, to confront me on a level you think you understand, as you dealt with our police chief. But let me tell you: I am no Bill Sandy. You have no comprehension of what you’re up against.” He flashed another yellow and brown smile. “And still there’s so much to tell. Are you up to it, Paul? Would you like a beer, Paul? It might be a very long night.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
He did. He very much wanted a beer, and Tabitha Drake surprised Paul by wanting one as well. The master vampire only drank more water as they returned to the living room and Miles Drake continued the long story of his longer life.
Frederick’s agonizing death played havoc with Drake, left him yearning for his own oblivion. Maybe there really was a Hell on the other side, but there was one here as well. If that one was populated with Amanda and Frederick, it might have fewer torments than where he was stuck.
The clan fled Louisiana. Drake lost all memory of leading or being led, but they escaped. They traveled north for a hundred aimless miles before Drake was able to take command again. He’d arrived at a decision.
“Wait a minute,” said Paul, vaguely irritated. “What about the lynch mob in Chitimacha Bend?”
Drake halted with the drinking glass halfway to his lips. He moved it to uncover a thin smile. “You want me to say that vengeance was mine. That we slaughtered to our hearts’ content, don’t you?”
“No, of course not. “I’m…curious, is all.”
“You want revenge, Paul, because you’ve only heard our side of the story. My side demands retribution, but what if it were the mother of Frederick’s final small victim telling the tale? Would you want your closure then, Paul?”
The vampire offered nothing more on this subject, and the story continued.
The clan was too ravished both physically and emotionally to do anything but flee. Day after day, night after night, their ranks thinned. Their emotionally numbed leader didn’t even care when, despite his standing order, sharecroppers were harvested in Mississippi, children snatched from mountain shacks in Tennessee. But as they traveled, an idea formed.
“A new society, Paul. I talked it over with James Chaplin and Olan Buck and a handful of the others. John Tolliver was against it, of course. He opposes everything, but he’s an excellent devil’s advocate.
“The times had changed and the hunters had become the hunt. The days of plundering and pillaging and slipping into the night were numbered. We’d eventually all die, victim of automobile chases, telephones and newspaper reporters. We had to change. To evolve. To blend in to a civilized society.”
“Babylon,” Paul said, thinking that it had taken him a good deal of the night to comprehend even the smallest fraction of the vampire’s history.
“Babylon,” Drake echoed.
It wasn’t their first chosen home. They settled initially in small towns in Tennessee, Ohio and elsewhere, but the locals always got too curious, too soon.
“It took us three more years of traveling and stopping and moving on before we discovered Babylon. In the meantime, we’d taught ourselves how to peacefully siphon blood from cooperative daylighters and, in an emergency, from a donated vein of one of our own.
“Oh, it’s not the same at all,” Drake said, shaking his head. “Life without the hunt is like eating without taste buds. Like seeing the world in black and white.” He sighed. “It’s vanilla, but it’s survival.”
In 1898, the Michigan town consisted of a feed store, a saloon and a handful of homes. Even then, the roads leading to it were dirt or gravel afterthoughts. The clan numbered just eleven vampires and eight daylighters by then, so it was relatively easy to fit in as a small, inoffensive religious sect.
“Babylon,” Drake said, chuckling softly. “The name appealed to me from the first. What a horror Babylon has become among nations.” Drake winked. “Jeremiah forty, verse forty-two.”
“Scriptures?” Paul asked, bewildered.
“Know the competition. The irony amused me. God cursed the Babylonians because they massacred and enslaved His Chosen. They were as accursed as us, I would like to think.” Drake shrugged as if the joke might not be readily apparent to everyone. “As I say, it appealed to my sense of irony.”
Paul rubbed his face. It was tingly, numb, covered in cobwebs. Thin grains of sand seemed to dig at his eyelids when he blinked. He heard tiny claws scratching at the front door. “Did you…what did you do with the locals?”
“Did I kill them, you mean? Massacre them like my Biblical predecessors? Some of them, I must admit. But not most. My intention, if you’ll recall, was to fit in. And yet all you can imagine is murder. I married them.” He grinned. “Well, not all of them, of course.
“The worst sin we committed in our town’s early days was to cut a sickly calf from a herd or grab a dog. Our few poor daylighters must have looked a bit wan as our idea of transfusions took hold, but it kept down the crime rate. And we did something else. Something we’d never done before. We socialized. You see, it’s much easier to introduce a spouse or lover to our non-traditional lifestyle than a total stranger, wouldn’t you agree?
“By that time, I’d been what I am for twenty years. I was sixty-two years old, and still looked to be in my early forties. At worse, a couple years had been added to my appearance. The dramatic slowdown of the aging process is a powerful sales tool, Paul.”
“I’ll bet you had them lined up at the door,” Paul replied dryly.
“You’d lose that bet,” the vampire said, jumping to his feet. He paced the living room, dining room, sunroom. Paul could picture him out in the foyer, craning his neck up at the balcony that overhung it, both of them wondering at shadows up there. Drake returned to the family room, examined book covers, touched vases, studied his reflection in a mirror.
Yes, it showed.
“The key to our continued survival—and I can’t stress this enough—was putting an end to the kind of violent activity that could bring attention upon us. Sure, we might feast on a lonely outsider now and then if we could be absolutely certain nobod
y would come looking, but for the most part we lived in peace and goodwill in our adopted community.”
Drake returned to the sofa and settled into it like he meant to stay. “Can you comprehend the difficulty in refraining from such primal urges? No, of course you can’t. You’ve never experienced bloodthirst, and I think the whole subject would be too gruesome for your sensibilities. What a madman I must seem.”
Paul took his old seat and the vampire turned his head to confront him full-on, as if he expected to read the truth on his face.
“Well, so be it,” Drake said after a moment. “I really should get points for good behavior because right now I can visualize you quite easily with your throat torn open. And yet, I can stifle my urges when it suits me to do so. Why? Because I’m strong, Paul. Because my desires are suborned to my superior will. Because I have age and maturity and discipline working to my advantage. So, to finally answer your question, while the daylighters might have been lining up at the door to be converted, we weren’t indiscriminately opening that door.”
The vampire rubbed his face as Paul had done earlier. Exhaustion perhaps catching up with him as well.
“There’s another issue involved,” Drake said. “A town needs daylighter activity to stay alive and to allay suspicion. What if you had driven into Babylon for the first time in the middle of the day and the streets were deserted, all the shades drawn? What would you think, Paul? How do you operate factories and sweep streets and run banks and answer phones only at night? I knew even a century ago that civilization would creep to our doorstep no matter where we holed up, so it was imperative that our town look and feet like every town in America—at least to the casual observer.”
“Wait,” Paul said. “I’m confused.” For a moment, he’d been on the verge of comprehension, but now he had more questions than before. He took a healthy slug from his beer can and said, “If you’re so cautious, how come you’re practically dragging strangers off the highway and killing them in public?”
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