Pale Immortal

by Anne Frasier

  He was glad the dead body wasn't still hanging from the rafters.

  Oh, Isobel. If you'd seen that thing.

  It would have sent her over the edge. It would send anybody over the edge.

  He started to move, to jump up and run to her. Pain shot up his ankle, and he crumpled back down on the mattress.

  "Pretend you're one of them," his mother's voice whispered. "Make them think you're one of them."

  He looked back up at the beam above his head. The rope was still there, but the body was gone.

  The only way to fool them is to go all the way. To become one of them, because they're smart. They'll see through you otherwise.

  Now he realized her voice hadn't come from inside the room at all. It had come from outside, sounding echoey and distant.

  "I believe you two know each other," Alba said, watching Graham intently.

  The really weird thing was, now that he'd finished off the blood, Graham's thinking wasn't as fuzzy. His vision was even clearer. He suddenly understood that this was a test, and if he passed he would be a Pale Immortal.

  "Yeah." Graham ran his tongue across his lips. "I know her."

  What were they going to do with Isobel?

  Once again his eyes were drawn to the rafters. He knew what would eventually happen. He knew where she would end up.

  Alba motioned toward her. "You can take the tape off her mouth."

  Travis, who was holding her by one arm, reached up and ripped off the duct tape. She flinched, but remained silent. Graham was impressed.

  "If you make a sound, we'll put it back," Alba said. "And anyway, if you scream, nobody will hear you out here." He turned his back to them and bent over the pew near the lantern. He rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a small plastic box.

  "Stand up."

  Graham stood, much more carefully this time, favoring his good leg.

  Alba held something small and metal in his hand.

  A single-edged razor. The kind carpenters might use to scrape paint off windows.

  "Take it."

  Graham took it.

  "I think you know what I want you to do."

  "Become one of them."

  Graham looked at the razor in his hand, then up at Isobel. "Yeah." He stepped toward her.

  Her mouth was colorless, trembling. Tears glistened in her eyes. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, at least with his expression, but Alba wasn't dumb. He would read him.

  So Graham remained emotionless. For a moment he thought about turning and attacking Alba, but that was a stupid idea. He could hardly stand, let alone bring down three guys.

  "Why are you doing this?" Isobel stared directly at him, separating him from the pack. Graham wanted to look away, but Alba would see that as weakness.

  "I thought you were different." Her voice was tired. Breathless. Good thing he was so fucked up himself. Otherwise he might have given away how worried he was.

  "I am different."

  "You think you're a vampire? There's no such thing as vampires." She looked from him to Alba, to Travis, to Craig. "There is no such thing as vampires."

  Graham reached down and lifted her bound arms. Her elbows were bent, her upper arms pressed against her breasts in a cramped position. Now he could see a bandage wrapped around one of her crossed wrists.

  "Not too deep," Alba warned.

  You could take the teacher out of the school, but you couldn't take the teacher out of the nutcase.

  Isobel ignored him. She continued to stare at Graham as if they were the only people in the room. "I trusted you," she whispered. "Out of everybody, I trusted you."

  He bowed his head so she couldn't see him swallow. "You shouldn't have."

  "I stood up for you when other people called you a freak."

  He brought the blade down.

  A line of blood appeared on her white skin. Beads formed. Blood quickly pooled, then began to run down her arm and drip on the floor. Alba put out his hand, and Graham returned the blade. Then he lifted Isobel's arm to his mouth and sucked.

  "I hate you," she said quietly.

  With his head bent, blood on his lips, Graham looked up at her. "I know."

  They passed her around.

  Like a can of beer or something. When she made it back to Graham, he saw that she was bleeding quite a bit.

  Had he cut her too deeply? Had he hit an artery?

  This time she didn't speak. She didn't even look at him. He was lifting the exposed wrist to his mouth once more when whatever color in her face washed away and her eyes rolled back in her head.

  She folded; he caught her before she hit the floor.

  Travis helped drag her to the mattress. Alba was already pulling out a roll of gauze, which he wrapped deftly around her wrist. "Don't want her to bleed out," he said. "Not yet."

  It was coming. They would string her upside down from the rafters and drain all of her blood.

  Alba crouched beside her and stroked her cheek.

  Graham wanted to knock his hand away.

  Alba put his arms around her and dragged her against him. Watching Graham, he pressed his lips to her temple, leaving a bloody smear. "You still like her, don't you?"

  Graham's heart was hammering out a warning. "I never liked her."

  "You were friends."

  "Not close friends."

  "Did you fuck her?"

  Graham closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

  He wanted to hit Alba and rip his hands away from her. He'd always been a fairly mellow person, slow to anger. This rage was something new, something he'd never felt before.

  "Don't do it," his mother whispered from wher- ever they'd dragged and stuffed her body. "Don't lose control."

  "Well, did you?"

  "No." He spoke quickly, biting out the word.

  "You wouldn't be playing the gentleman here, would you?"

  "Why would I want to do that? We may have hung out, but that's all it was. She was there, that's all. Just a girl." He shrugged.

  Alba picked up a length of chain.

  "No," Graham said.

  "I'm sorry, kiddo."

  "I thought I was a Pale Immortal now." Had this whole act been for nothing?

  "You are, but I'm not ready to let you roam free."

  He should have tried to fight. He should have tried to get away. He shouldn't have listened to Lydia. When had she ever given him good advice in his entire life? Why would he start listening to her now, when the bitch was dead?

  It had been a trick. She was in with Alba. They were in this together.

  Graham ran a hand across his eyes. His thoughts were muddled again, the moments of clarity getting farther and farther apart.

  The adrenaline that had kept him going for the past ten minutes faded. He trembled. The room began to spin, and he dropped to the floor, letting out a cry as sharp pain shot up his leg.

  Travis and Craig chained them together—Graham and the still unconscious Isobel—while Alba oversaw the operation.

  Spooning.

  That's what it was called. The way they were puzzled front to back, both facing the same direction, with Graham behind Isobel. She was curled up in a fetal position, her wrists still taped and crossed. They dragged the chain around them, across their chests, around their waists and hips, pulling it tight with each circle.

  Was she dead? Graham wondered at one point, when Isobel didn't respond to any of the jostling or positioning. No, he could see her chest rising and falling.

  While Travis looped the lock through the chain links and snapped it closed, Craig toyed with a thick strand of Isobel's hair. Her hair wasn't that long, and he got really close so he could put it under his nose like a mustache. Isobel's hair almost matched the hair on Craig's head. Graham found himself staring, trying to make sense of Isobel's blond hair as Craig's mustache.

  Craig made the mustache bob up and down.

  "Get away." Graham shoved him.

  Craig dropped the hair and stumbled backward.
>
  "Hey, asshole." Craig turned to look at the others, while keeping a finger pointed at Graham. "He pushed me. Anybody see that? Better tape his hands."

  "No!" Graham panicked, then forced himself to calm down. "I have to be able to get a drink. I need water." He ran a tongue across his cracked lips. "Just one bottle of water."

  Alba looked disgusted and annoyed by all of them. "Let's go." He and his gang blew out the candles and took the lantern and flashlights, leaving Graham and Isobel alone in the dark.

  Chapter 37

  In Tuonela, twilight never lingered and darkness always came quickly, like an extinguished flame or a dropped curtain. The sky was a deep blue velvet when Rachel checked her cell phone and found she'd missed a call from Evan—made from her number. Most likely while she was waiting for a response from AAA. She called her own number, then tried his cell but there was no answer.

  Without leaving a message she pocketed her phone and made the final ascent up a sidewalk that was broken by steep steps. Once she gained street level, she paused to catch her breath—and spotted Seymour's patrol car parked in front of the morgue.

  She hurried across the street, and around the back to the service entry. The door was unlocked. She stumbled inside to find her dad standing in the hallway outside her office, the green semigloss walls a backdrop, the ceiling light casting a dark shadow on his face below his hat.

  "Isobel Fry has been reported missing," Seymour said. "She didn't come home last night."

  Evan had seen Isobel last night.

  "And remember the girl up north who vanished?" Seymour asked. "Just found out that Evan was in the area that night. Used his credit card at a gas station three miles from where the woman was last seen."

  The circumstantial and physical evidence was mounting. Add that to Evan's lost time and strange behavior and he couldn't look much guiltier.

  Rachel was also guilty. She'd helped him avoid arrest. If Isobel was dead, it was Rachel's fault.

  She glanced up, toward her apartment.

  "He isn't there," her dad said, easily reading her. "I already checked. He was at his house not long ago. Left in his car and lost the officer who was tailing him."

  "You think I might know where he went?"

  He looked at her with expectation. "I was hoping."

  She moved quickly past him, almost running into the autopsy suite. She opened the cooler drawers. One, two, three. The only occupant was the mummified corpse.

  "Lose something?" her dad asked, appearing behind her.

  "Just checking."

  "I'm heading to Evan's house right now to see if I can stir up any clues."

  She shut the cooler door with a loud click. "I'm coming with you."

  Seymour didn't speed and didn't use his siren. He drove smoothly and efficiently, relaxed in the seat, one hand on the wheel. They might have been head- ing to Dairy Queen. He would order a hot-fudge sundae and she would get a cone with sprinkles. They would sit at a picnic table under the oak tree and watch the hatched mayflies come shooting out of the river.

  Seymour turned the final corner, drove up the hill, and stopped in front of Stroud's house. A single police car was already there, an officer standing outside. Seymour put the car in park and shut off the engine. "All the other patrol units are at Isobel's house," he said.

  On the porch, Seymour pulled out his handgun. The door was already unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside. When he gave the all-clear, Rachel followed.

  Stroud was everywhere. This place was Evan as much as any place could be a person.

  She forced herself to move through the living room, looking for any sign of disruption, any clue to where Evan might have gone.

  Had he killed Isobel last night, before he'd returned to the morgue? Before they'd made love? Or had sex? Whatever it could be called.

  She'd moved through the day in a fog, as if deliberately trying to forget what had happened between them. Now she concentrated on last night, and a memory came rushing back. In her mind she saw Evan wearing the Pale Immortal's scarf.

  Evan is the copycat killer.

  Moments ticked by until she straightened and stared at her father. "Evan thinks he's the Pale Immortal."

  "That's kinda why we're here," Seymour said.

  "No, I mean Evan really thinks he's the reincarnation of Richard Manchester."

  Seymour looked skeptical.

  "It all makes sense." Rachel spoke in a rush. "Everything. His infatuation with Old Tuonela. Even his disease. Especially his disease."

  "You mean his disease isn't real?"

  "It's real. The disease brought all of this on. Think about it. People have been accusing him of being a vampire for years. They treat him like a freak. The disease had destroyed his life. So he lost it. In his own head he became a vampire. He became the Pale Immortal. The fantasy has replaced what's lacking in his own life. As long as he imagines himself a vampire, he can be stronger than Evan Stroud. More powerful than Evan Stroud. He can be more than he really is."

  Last night he'd pulled her into his fantasy. Last night she'd believed it too.

  "That's an interesting theory, sweetheart. But to be honest, I don't care about any of that psychological stuff. I don't want to get in Stroud's head and stroll around to figure out why he's doing what he's doing. I just want to stop him."

  Seymour checked Evan's answering machine. Only a few messages, all old. Two were from his editor, one from his agent, another from his father, and a couple more from a lawn-care company. The editor and agent wanted to know the approximate delivery date of his next book.

  How quickly things changed.

  "They must have called before word got out that he was wanted for questioning," Rachel said.

  She sifted through a pile of mail on the table, but nothing jumped out at her. "He came for the car, of course," she said. "But what else would he have gotten?"

  "Money. Credit cards. Travel clothes. Passport maybe."

  "So you think he's heading out of the country."

  "That would be my guess."

  "He can only travel at night."

  "He'll go as far as he can, then stop for the day."

  "I don't think he's leaving. Not with Graham still missing."

  "He wasn't even aware of the kid's existence until two weeks ago. And let's face it, you know the statistics. Graham's been missing long past the crucial window. Evan would also know that."

  Rachel pulled out her cell phone and tried to reach Evan again. No answer. His phone was probably turned off.

  The next room they hit was the library.

  On the way down the hall, Rachel managed to slip past the photo of the woman in the tub without so much as turning her head in that direction. Inside the library she spotted a large, thin book teetering on top of a stack of much smaller ones.

  A plat book of Juneau County.

  She picked it up and thumbed through it. A page had been torn out. After examining the maps on either side of the missing section, she looked up at her father. "I know where he went. Where all vampires go. To Old Tuonela."

  Chapter 38

  Isobel gradually returned to groggy consciousness.

  So tired. Too tired to even try to open her eyes. As she lay on her side, her wrists bound in front of her, she gradually became aware of pain and hot spots on her hip, her thigh, her breastbone. She tried to move, to stretch, but couldn't; she was not only taped, but bound by a heavy chain.

  Breathing.

  Behind her.

  She gasped in terror and her eyes flew open, her own breathing ragged.

  Black.

  She'd never seen such darkness. It was so close. It covered her. She struggled, fighting the bindings, terror and the need for flight taking over all thought.

  She screamed.

  A hand clamped over her mouth. "Shhhh," a voice rasped in her ear.

  She struggled, and whimpered deep in her throat.

  "Isobel!" The person holding her gave her a small shake.
>
  She stopped fighting, but her breathing was still rapid and shallow. Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth.

  "Graham?"

  "Yeah. It's me."

  For a brief second she relaxed, then tensed again. He was one of them. A Pale Immortal.

  "W-where are we?"

  "In the church."

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I'm supposed to watch you. Make sure you don't scream or try to get away."

  "Where's Alba?"

  "Don't know."

  "Is there anybody else around?"

  "Don't know that either."

  Maybe he wasn't really one of them. Maybe he was just an opportunist. "We have to get out of here."

  That suggestion was met with a long silence. "Didn't you hear what I just said?" he finally asked. "I'm here to watch you. To make sure you don't get away."

  A chain had been wrapped around them both, binding them together. "You're a prisoner too."

  "Temporarily. This is a test. A test I'm going to pass."

  She thought about the boy she'd known, and tried to connect him to this stranger.

  You couldn't trust anybody. She felt like such a fool. She'd actually daydreamed about him. She went out of her way to avoid that conventional, mainstream crap, yet she'd daydreamed about him.

  "You drank my blood," she said. "Do you realize how sick that is?"

  "Depends on your perspective."

  "Do you really think you're a vampire? Because you drank my blood?"

  "Not yet. I'm not one yet."

  "Vampires don't exist."

  "Do you believe in God?"

  "Yes. I think so."

  "Do you have proof He exists?"

  Alba's betrayal had hurt, but Graham's betrayal hurt more. "I was good to you. I helped you. I defended you. I taught you to knit." Her voice broke.

  "It's nothing personal."

  "You stink."

  Behind her, he shifted. He touched her hair.

  "You smell good."

  "Vampires don't exist."

  "Did you forget? My dad's a vampire. That makes me a vampire's son."

  She wished she could see him. Wished she could look into his eyes. Maybe then she could reason with him. Maybe she'd be able to tell if he believed what he said.

  "They're going to kill me. You know that, don't you?"