BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

  The man-thing took his time hunkering down into a crouch. For a moment, Ben felt his awareness go daffy, but the feeling came and went. He had no idea the naked terror on his face was an appetizer for the savage. Shoulders heaved up and down as the monster's breathing accelerated. He inhaled through his nose, and growled each time he exhaled. This rhythm picked up speed until Ben was positively frozen.

  Ben felt the ice in his veins, and the heat as he pissed his pants again—a lot this time. It began to freeze between his legs in the cold almost as quickly as it darkened the front of his jeans. He thought about his camera, of all things, and how he could sell a shot of this creature to Star or Weekly World News for an easy ten grand, maybe even twenty. Twenty G’s would pay for his next year of grad school.

  The monster was a spring about to be cut loose, and when the sound coming from the thing cut off and everything went still, Ben’s attention snapped back to what was really important here—the fact that he was about to become photographic subject matter for the crime lab, an entirely different market than Weekly World News.

  The thing vaulted up and hacked into Ben’s jugular. The next warmth on his already wet jeans was the release of pure ecstasy, the last thing Ben expected to feel.

  The last thing he ever did feel.

  Yes, thought Sabian as the glandular kamikaze hit Ben’s system. Perfect.

  Goddamned delightful, to tell the truth.

  It was a necessary cruelty to do this without entrancement. Sabian had to terrify the amateur photographer, and why shouldn’t he? The kid was even more annoying up close, almost a pleasure to condemn. And truly, who was he kidding about the almost part?

  The effects were immediate. Everything was vivid, everything raw, especially the paranoia. Sabian took deeper pulls from Ben’s supply, less and less able to distinguish between what was happening in this moment and what might be happening to Marley—wherever she was.

  Sabian tightened his grip on Ben’s wrist. The kid moaned, obviously jacked up on the pleasure principle. It was all too much. Sabian came undone, and without making a conscious decision to, he let go and gave free reign to the savage that lived in the deepest, darkest parts of his psyche, his id extraordinaire.

  He ripped Ben’s throat open, and clamped down like a pit bull. Ben gurgled, and his entire body went stiff under Sabian. Within seconds, Sabian had another dose of his meds, quite ahead of schedule.

  Good. He would be able to lose himself for just a while. What he needed was a reprieve from the worry, just a brief holiday from imagining the worst. Sabian knew the most likely outcome for Marley was the anonymous decomposition he’d imagined earlier, and if another image of Marley’s vacant eyes shouldered its way into his vision, he just might lose it permanently.

  When it was done, he cast Ben’s body aside. His breathing to returned to normal, and then stopped completely. Sitting very still, a catatonic patient in a psychiatric ward, Sabian allowed the blood to penetrate the various canals through which it would travel. His mind was as still as his body.

  After a short while—maybe five minutes—he began to once again have a deliberate thought process about what just happened, and what needed to be done.

  It was convenient he’d fed right next to a trash dumpster. It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for Ben. Sabian’s body no longer produced the oils that left fingerprints, so his species was always guaranteed a measure of anonymity.

  Into the dumpster went the body, and on to the next order of business went the vampire.

  Agents Solis and Teichmann walked past the front of The Basement. The main entrance boasted an impressive line of impatient customers that snaked all the way to the top landing of that half-flight. Some people wore costumes, some herded bouncy kids dressed as princesses and wizards, and the rest looked on in distaste, their only costume the sad faces of adults who grew up and lost the will to get out of the box and let loose a little.

  It was the Friday before a Saturday-Halloween, and there were only two kinds of people in the world: those who loved the holiday, and those who didn’t. Solis thought maybe Teichmann was the former. The goofy look that said Awesome on his partner’s face was a dead give away.

  They checked around the back of the building. The long line of patrons inside meant trouble. Solis took in the atmosphere while Teichmann looked around the perimeter. Both Hunters now had their guns drawn.

  "I got nothing," said Teichmann. They stood next to each other, letting their heads complete a slow arc, eyes sweeping every detail they could, bodies below the neck statues.

  "Oh shit," said Solis. He pointed to the red-dotted snow just outside the garbage bin enclosure.

  The two agents holstered their guns. Solis walked over to the cage and pushed it open. There was no body, but the snow was stained red where a small puddle of blood had been absorbed. That and the cigarette still burning on top of the shoe-shaped ice where footsteps had compacted snow were enough.

  Solis stared down at the clues. He walked over to the dumpster, hoisted the lid, and let it slam back down. "Goddamn it."

  Teichmann, the tedious fuck that he was, just had to go take a gander in the trash bin, knowing he always caught the vapors when human lives were lost on his watch.

  "What the hell is he doing?" asked Teichmann, looking a bit faint, sure as shit.

  "Whatever the hell he wants."

  Teichmann opened his mouth to ask another question, closed it for a minute considering, and then said, "What’s his next move?"

  "He’ll find them." That was a given. Solis knew what was next without a doubt. Sabian was BloodStar.

  "How?"

  Solis looked at his partner, and said, "Where would you go if you were a pissed off parasite who needed information right before Halloween?"

  Sabian found himself at the river that divided the northern end of Fort Collins from the rest of the city. It didn’t operate according to any particular agenda. Sabian could sure as hell relate. The Poudre was not yet frozen in the usual bends and twists, so he could see the debris floating along, catching the flakes that melted on contact. This river took whatever got in its path and either carried it off, or made a deposit when the burden was too much to bear.

  Again, Sabian could relate. He’d left so much rubbish behind that if he wasn’t careful, the Rocky Mountain Front Range was going to wonder just what the hell was happening that bodies kept popping up with no blood left in their tissues.

  He’d chosen a part of the river west of town with no access—no human access, at least—and was at the riverbank watching. The current slowed in places, but never stopped. Now that was a condition that was harder to imagine. And something to be envied.

  Sabian would have to be like this river to find Marley.

  He hunkered down and let his fingers skim the top of the moving waters and groped for his childe. Sabian would much rather have casted for Marley, but soul ties, even if more durable, were not as resonant as blood ties. He held his breath, and shut his eyes tight, hoping to close out all distractions.

  Hoping. Casting.

  Anya lived. Marley lived. That was all. He sensed them in the mountains and could not pinpoint a location. Altogether frustrating.

  Sabian finally turned and walked away from the water. Even through the still raging blizzard, Sabian could see daylight was waning, and the hidden sun would set on this day like every other day. There was nothing special about today as far as the sun and the river and the mountains were concerned. Time was like greased lightening, screaming its way toward Marley’s final moments, closer than ever now.

  Tomorrow was Halloween. He was sure it held no significance with respect to Anya’s plans, but something nagged him.

  Oh, how excited his Kindred brethren must be. Halloween was like Christmas to his kind.

  How excited Roman must be.

  Thoughts of his maker nailed him in the chest so hard he almost lost his footing on the rocky bank. Roman was the only vampire who could both
quantify and qualify the changes Sabian had gone through, the only fiend around who could take inventory of what Sabian had become as compared to the fledgling of Eighteenth Century England he once was.

  And Roman was quite proud of this.

  Roman could see the situation outside of time.

  Roman fucking loved Halloween.

  And just like that, Sabian had direction. He needed to find his maker. How long had it been? Fifty years? No, a hundred. It was Sabian’s capacity to overrule the will of his sire, to keep away from his maker, that first spawned whisperings of a new BloodStar among Kindred.

  But just because Sabian chose to stay away from Roman didn’t mean that he couldn’t find him. The attraction of his blood to the blood of his sire would forge the path. It was the way of Kindred. Childer sought reunion with their sires always. Vamps who had sired childer were bonded to their young, often desiring closeness, but nothing like the crippling need their progeny felt toward them. Except for Roman. Roman would kill to have Sabian at his heel, almost a role reversal. And the old bloodsucker would be simple to find.

  Sabian didn’t even need to cast. Roman was a glutton for self-glorification and extravagance. He would spend Halloween in New York City, like all vamps of the attention-whore variety.

  Sabian had to catch the first flight out. He needed every spare moment to find Marley, but he was sure getting to New York, getting to Roman, would be time well spent. Somehow Sabian knew the old vamp would set him straight, give him the inspiration to focus his will.

  Too bad that inspiration always came at a price with Roman, who got off on instigating the most fantastic feelings of frustration and disgust.

  Worth it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sam’s jaw muscles danced a spasm as he grit his teeth on their way past the Billings city limits sign. They’d made it to Montana in the afternoon after taking the most God-awful indirect route possible, staying up in the Rockies for hours longer than they needed to. He could have driven straight there from Fort Collins in seven or eight hours. Instead it had taken fifteen.

  Anya said the BloodStar would lose his shit and beat feet every which way but loose. She said he had a hard time tracking through the mountains. She made it sound like he’d go absolutely agro and have no control over himself. According to Anya, this would give the lag time they needed for her plan—whatever that was.

  Sam was becoming increasingly worried about that part. The name of the game now was surviving the lag. It wasn’t lost on him that Halloween was tomorrow. He wondered if that was a good omen, bad, or just coincidence. He thought perhaps none of the above.

  Getting the vampire into the motel room was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever done. Vampires had to take shelter from the sun, just like Hollywood romanticized, but there was nothing glamorous about the process. He backed the van's ass end directly up against the threshold of the door. After pulling the heavy curtains, he threw a thick blanket over Anya, and let her body bounce against him violently as he pulled a speed-racer maneuver through the door and into the bathroom.

  Ideas of just pulling an oops-did-I-let-that-blanket-slip-off-you move were considered and rejected a hundred times between pulling into the motel lot and actually dumping Anya on the cheap linoleum floor. She would have been scorched, but her darkened sanctuary in the back of the panel van and the safety of the room were just too close together to really actually it off.

  As he made another trip for their bags, he wondered exactly when he’d been reduced to a valet.

  Marley was last. She was heaped in the back of the van, still breathing, thankfully, but all color had drained out of her complexion during the drive. Her nightshirt was ripped open and Sam could see puncture wounds all over her neck and leading down to her breasts. He wasn’t an honorable man, and normally would have indulged in the view, but his gut didn’t cooperate with the impulse. Sam arranged another blanket, carefully hiding flesh Sam Junior was more than interested in, and gathered Marley into his arms.

  "Shit, shit, shit," he said, turning his head to the side so he wouldn’t have to look at her. When he’d pulled her up close against his chest, cradling her like a baby, Sam felt familiarity wash over him, but it wasn’t a general sense of knowing her; this was quite specific.

  Intimate.

  It was having your severed hand sewn back into place and the joy of curling your fingers, giving thumbs up, flipping the lone-bone to an asshole in traffic. Being able to fist yourself in a one-handed salute to the joys of auto-eroticism.

  And yes, that’s exactly where his brain went with this woman in his arms. She was the half that had been missing, the half that made him want to disappear under the blanket with her and go to work on all the parts he’d so chastely covered.

  Sam forced his feet toward the motel room when all they wanted to do was cut and run the other direction, get this woman as far away from the monster in that bathroom as possible. All of his protective instincts waged war against his long harbored rage against the BloodStar. Part of him wanted—no, needed—to keep this woman safe, and the other part of him knew that he needed her as bait to catch the biggest suckerfish in the lake.

  Years of determination won out, and he crossed the threshold into the darkness of the motel room that was sure to become his prison as much as Marley’s. He had no idea when the BloodStar would catch up to them, but Sam knew that if Sabian’s feelings for Marley were as intense as what he felt right now, nothing would keep the royal motherfucker away.

  When all was still, Anya slinked out with glowing cat eyes into the blackness of the room. Dusk would envelop the landscape soon, and the motel room needed the barricade of the curtains less and less.

  "Why isn’t he here already?" The impatience was evident in Sam’s voice. "We’ve had her long enough."

  "Patience," said the vampire.

  "Why doesn’t she wake up?"

  "Because I haven’t decided for her to. Soon, though. Why don’t you go get something for her to eat? Then maybe you can feed me, as well." She smiled at Sam as though he were a willing participant, the fucking leech.

  Sam rubbed his neck. By this time he’d been a coerced blood donor for Anya, not the gentlest feeder, for too long. "I don’t have much more to give you."

  "I don’t hear her complaining, and she’s given as much as you."

  "She’s unconscious." The you stupid bitch went unsaid.

  "If you’re so jealous, Samuel, I’m sure I can work something out."

  "As long as we’re still on the same page."

  "I haven’t forgotten," said Anya.

  "I’ll do it. It’s what I came here for."

  "Of course you will, Samuel."

  He hated that she talked to him like he was a pouting child. "And then I’ll have to deal with you."

  "Of course."

  Or Sabian will, thought Sam, knowing it would be much worse to die at the hands of BloodStar than Hunter.

  Anya didn’t believe he would do it, or maybe she didn’t believe he could do it. Sam had the same doubts, honestly. Killing a vampire was like killing an elephant-sized roach—the fuckers didn’t ever seem to die, and killing one just made you realize there are thousands more under the floorboards.

  Sam knew he was almost out of time either way. He was addicted to the feedings. Every time he looked at Anya he was overcome with filthy fantasies of her teeth in his flesh and his dick in her hands. Where was the fucking BloodStar?

  He settled back in his chair, waiting. Patience was a virtue. Perhaps the only one he had left.

  It took a while for Marley’s eyes to adjust. The room was dark, and her internal clock told her it was closer to night than day. Blurriness fogged her vision. What the hell? Did someone egg the windshield?

  Marley tried to sit up, but horrendous pain in her head flattened her back to the…bed? But not her bed. This didn't feel right.

  And why was a plague of nettles camped out behind her eyes?

  When she’d ga
thered herself, Marley tried it again, and found that even if her brain didn’t feel like vivisection-over-a-bed-of-wild-rice, she couldn’t sit up because her hands were bound to the headboard.

  Panic. Fucking pure, cold panic. She looked around. Cheap landscape painting (the kind reproduced en masse), scratchy bedding, industrial carpet, and the sound of an interstate nearby. She was definitely in a motel room of the fleabag variety.

  Marley didn’t know how long she’d been out, but her stomach doubled in on itself in a desperate search for anything to digest. She ached, her shoulders were tweaked at an angle more appropriate for Olympic-uneven-bars, and her scalp itched.

  "Not feeling so pretty?"

  Marley jumped and jerked her head in the direction of the voice only to see nothing in the shadows. She closed her eyes against the joy of whipping her head so quickly. Jesus Christ, it felt like her brain itself was swollen up against the sides of her skull. She had to force herself still when the voice spoke to her from another part of the tiny motel room.

  "I wonder. Do you suppose Sabian would find you attractive in this moment? I think it would be an interesting experiment."

  Marley turned her head slowly to the left, searching in vain through the deepening gloom of the room. The owner of the disembodied voice was eclipsed by darkness. That and the torment in Marley’s dome; fuck it all, this migraine was one for the medical journals.

  Then a woman’s whisper caressed her ear, right up close and personal. "Knowing him, he’d still want you, ugly, dirty, and used."

  Marley tried again to shake off the effects of unnatural sleep and work around the brain-blunt-force-trauma, but really, it wasn’t so hard to figure out. Her abductor was a vampire like Sabian.

  "Who are you? What do you want?" The raw meat of her neck and breasts already answered at least part of that question. She was made an unwilling blood donor while she slept. Marley couldn’t even guess how long she’d been shut up in this room, but it felt like days. She was desperate to rub at the splinters in her eyes. The pins and needles poked and scratched, insistent as a tortured hand or foot that had fallen asleep.