Forever Young

by Daniel Pierce

  Kamila’s shotgun did a lot to even the playing field. She fired from the top of the stairs and hit the one nearest the staircase in the face. He collapsed and turned to ash before he could even scream. Tess launched into the fray, leaping onto the second one with a shriek.

  I directed another stream of flame at the next vampire, who rushed in to help her friend. I almost hesitated because she was a woman. I’d always been taught not to raise my hand to a woman, but I didn’t let it stop me. These were different circumstances. This wasn’t a woman. This was a vampire in female form. She would kill me if I let her. She was trying to kill my friend, my mentor. My lover.

  A blast from Kamila’s shotgun took out a second vampire, and the one I was burning turned to ash. Tess spiked her foe at almost the same time, leaving one alive. Tess turned to him, but I stopped her. “We need to ask him about Mort. Keep him alive.”

  The vampire snarled and reached for her, its claws like obsidian. Tess spiked him in one leg. Kamila shot him in the other, which was a better aim than I’d ever seen with a shotgun blast. He fell to the floor, sobbing tears of blood and howling with impotent rage.

  I jumped down to the floor, making sure to bend my knees when I landed. The impact was hard, but I absorbed it to kneel by the vamp, my hands raised as I readied a flame to be put between his dark eyes. His anger—and mine—made my power greater than ever before, and like a wounded animal, the vamp could sense it.

  I got close to the vampire. “Do things like you have names?” I demanded, my teeth held together by furious disgust.

  “I’ve got more names than you have teeth, you inbred hick,” the vampire seethed, picking his head up.

  I focused my flame in a narrow beam and burned his eyebrows off without touching the rest of him. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but right now, I could do anything. He howled, and his burns oozed blood.

  “Micah. My name is Micah.” He glowered at me. “Just kill me.”

  “No.” Kamila sneered at him. “Not yet. We have some questions for you. If you’re a good little leech, we’ll kill you good and fast.”

  Tess smiled sweetly at him. “Personally, I’m hoping you’re a hardass and try to hold back. I like the sounds you make when you scream.”

  I knew it was an act, but she still sent chills up my spine.

  “I don’t take questions from cockroaches.” Micah spat out a mouthful of blood.

  “How many Ferin have you killed?” I looked down my nose at him, raising my hand in what I hoped was a threatening manner.

  It seemed to work because he struggled with his breath. “I killed some up at that dump in Maine. I didn’t count how many I took. It’s not like there was a bounty on ears or something. I’d have cleaned up, though.”

  My stomach turned. Had he delivered the killing blow to Margaret? No, he hadn’t brought out claws. “How did you find the place in Maine?”

  He glared at me. “I don’t know. The others invited me to go stomp some bugs, and I went.”

  I exchanged some glances with the others. I believed him. The others shrugged. Either they didn’t care how Owl’s Head had been found—which was valid since knowing wouldn’t solve anything but telling us who the traitor had been—or they believed and didn’t care. It didn’t matter since it wouldn’t bring anyone back.

  “What about this place?” Kamila narrowed her eyes at Micah. “How did you find this place?”

  “Your neighbors tasted delicious.” Micah laughed and laughed.

  Tess backhanded him with her silver spike. It stopped the laughter. “Where’s Mort?”

  “Who the fuck is Mort?”

  I hit him with a shot of flame, directly in his stomach. It looked tender. I was right. “Where is Mort?”

  He sobbed in an almost human sound. “I don’t know who the fuck Mort is. If I did know, I’d probably tell you because—fuck, this fire...but I don’t know any roaches named Mort. It’s the truth. I’ve done everything you asked. Just kill me.”

  I thought he might still have some information, but Kamila shot him again. The buckshot shredded his blackened heart, and he died. Again. We swept up the ashes in silence and brought them outside, where we scattered them to the wind. His remains didn’t deserve to be in a human home.

  “Vampires can rebuild themselves if someone bleeds on their ashes,” Kamila spoke softly after their remains scattered. “I don’t know if anyone ever explained that to you, but it’s the truth. That’s why Tess always scatters the ashes. It’s enough to keep the ashes separated like that but scattering them is the safest way.”

  I hummed. “I hadn’t known that.” I took a deep breath. “Kamila, I’m sorry.”

  She tilted her head. “Whatever for?”

  “For bringing this to your doorstep. You’ve worked so hard for centuries to keep out of all of this, to keep apart from it, and here I come, and you’re caught up in it again. It’s my fault.” I bowed my head and wished the ground would swallow me whole. All the rage and fury that fueled me during our fight faded away now, leaving me with only guilt and shame.

  “Jason, you didn’t even know my name before you came here. I can’t blame you. I can’t even blame Tess.” She turned to Tess, whose cheeks darkened. “Margaret’s the one who sent you to me, and Mort’s the one who told you where to find me. And those vampires are the ones who made the choice to attack. I can’t hold you all responsible for things they do of their own free will, can I?” She sighed. “Come on. Let’s go get Daisy. We can sleep in the van and worry about the rest in the morning.” She winked. “The door handles are silver too, you know?”

  Tess laughed, her face truly relaxing for the first time since we’d come here. “Genius.”

  We released Daisy, who seemed happy to be let out of her hiding spot, and retreated to the van. The bed in the back had been well maintained, and all four of us curled up in a giant pile. We would have made a strange sight to anyone looking at us, but out here in the backwoods, there wasn’t anyone but the moon and stars to watch over us.

  At least, there shouldn’t have been, but I found it hard to relax. I couldn’t make myself believe there weren’t more vampires out there somewhere, their fangs seeking my body with unerring aim.

  I’d done some things tonight that I wasn’t proud of, but torching a vampire wasn’t one of them. They were trying to kill me, so they had to die. It was as simple as that. What did give me pause, and plenty of it, was having deliberately used fire to cause someone else pain. I’d never deliberately hurt someone before. I’d been in fights, but that was a whole different animal.

  I’d tortured that vampire.

  I kind of hated myself for it. I didn’t want to be the kind of man who tortured people. True, vampires weren’t people. They were monsters, they were the enemy, and they’d do it to me over and over if they got the chance. That didn’t mean I wanted to do it to them. We were supposed to be the good guys. What kind of good guys had no moral compass at all?

  At the same time, how were we supposed to survive without any kind of information? This wasn’t like other situations, where people had intelligence networks and chose to ignore them in favor of inflicting pain. We had no spies—and no way of finding spies. We had no cooperative vampires and no one who would give us more details. We just had ourselves.

  We had to use the tools we had available to us, even when they were ugly. It made me sick, but I could live with torture making me sick. It meant I hadn’t become a monster yet. It might be something we had to do, but as long as we didn’t get too comfortable with it, we’d probably be okay.

  I drifted off, and the stars looked down on my confusion but said nothing.

  25

  The next morning, we had to leave. I almost wished we didn’t have to go, but Kamila wished us well, and she meant it. I did ask her to come along, and I meant that too, but she was resolute. I didn’t want to just leave her here like a sitting duck. They knew where she was and what she was.

  She declined again,
just as I knew she would, and Tess and I got back to the process of making ourselves ready to travel.

  Daisy seemed disappointed. I think she liked us. Maybe it was just the idea of having people around that she liked, but she whined a few times and even tried to climb into my saddlebags. It took a series of belly rubs to get her used to the idea that our leaving was imminent.

  Tess turned to her former rival just before we left. “Look, Kamila. I know you and I have had our differences, but I don’t wish you ill. I never have. I’m not just worried about leaving you here by yourself. I know you’re more than capable of taking care of anything that comes up. It’s just, the times we’re in right now aren’t normal times. We need all the help we can get, right? We’re worried about you on your own, but we need you too. I need you, and Jason needs you. It seems like a good idea to stick together, for all of our sakes.”

  Kamila sighed and shook her head before going back into the house. We did one last check on our bikes, but then Kamila came back out. She had a duffel bag, a container of dog food, and her shotgun.

  I stared for a long moment. “You’re...coming with us?”

  She winked at me. “Maybe I will. You never know what the next few days will hold, right? Besides, we can all sleep in the van instead of under a tree.”

  I closed my mouth and didn’t say anything, but my heart felt a hell of a lot lighter. Daisy’s tail wagged joyfully, so I knew she was excited too.

  We helped Kamila board up her windows and load anything she might want into the van, and then we headed out, nervous energy filling the air between us.

  It would take us about a week of driving to get to Twin Falls if we stuck to back roads the way we preferred. Well, technically, my companions preferred it. I’d rather have made a beeline and taken as few breaks as possible, but even my Ferin physiology wouldn’t tolerate riding my bike for forty-two straight hours. If Mort was in trouble, we probably couldn’t save him, even if we got there today. Killing ourselves to get there wouldn’t help him.

  Knowing that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

  We bunked down for the night in a campground near Athens, Ohio. The weather up there was a lot cooler than it was in Virginia, and I blessed Kamila’s foresight in bringing so many blankets. Everyone sharing the same bed helped too, but when Kamila came of age, sleeping together was an act of necessity. People shared a bed because they didn’t have efficient heating systems.

  Sharing a bed with two beautiful women was erotic. Daisy snoring between us made it less so.

  Tess headed into town to pick us up some breakfast the next morning, and I took the chance to ask Kamila why she’d decided to come with us. “Not that I’m not grateful, because I am. I’m just surprised. You were pretty adamant about not going with us when I invited you before.”

  She sat at the picnic table and leaned against me. “Oh, you know how it is.” Her long red hair tickled my hands. “There’s something about you that intrigues me, Jason. You can’t deny me the opportunity to explore that.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, middle-aged insurance workers are just fascinating specimens. I know.” Daisy rolled over, and I rubbed her belly, just like she wanted me to. It gave me an excuse not to meet the intensity of Kamila’s gaze.

  “Jason, we both know that’s not what I’m referring to. You’ve got the most amazing fire power I’ve ever seen in a Ferin. I’m strong, and I know it, but you’re something else. You know that, right?”

  I blushed. “I know I’ve got some fire ability, but I can’t be that much. And it’s not because of anything I did. It just kind of happened. But hey, if it keeps you around, then yes, I’m the fiercest flame to ever burn from the state of Maine. I’m a column of fire, served up hot and fresh to your door.” I gave her a mock salute.

  She laughed and gave me a playful swat on the arm. “Goober. You and that great big fire burning inside of you, mixed up with all this...stuff with the vamps, all at the same time? I just think it can’t be a coincidence. It’s intriguing. I want to see what comes next. I want to be part of it instead of just reacting to it, or having it happen to me.” She looked down and away. “Don’t get me wrong. Having those fangs show up at my house wasn’t my idea of a good time. I don’t think it’s anyone’s idea of a good time, to be honest. If it’s going to happen, I want it to happen because I fought them with everything in me, not because they were out marauding, and I happened to be in the area.” She swallowed. “Not like last time.”

  I had nothing to say. Every Ferin I’d met so far had seemed perfectly adjusted to their state, but none of them had sought it out. All of us got this way through trauma. No one talked about it, either. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t. Nothing good can come of it. I’d rather just move on. But maybe I’m just finally ready to get some company.” She smiled up at me. “Maybe I’ve been living on my own for too long, and it’s time for me to be around my own kind again. I know Daisy thinks so.”

  Daisy thumped her tail in agreement. It was a ridiculous gesture given that she was upside down, but she got her point across. Joy knows no proper position.

  Tess came back not long after, and we happily enjoyed breakfast sandwiches in the beautiful autumn morning. Then we headed west our eyes open and senses on alert.

  The land was scenic. It wasn’t as pretty as Maine or even Virginia, but I was biased about my home territory, and I tended to think every place looks better with fog and a few lobsters. A lot of the road passed through farm country, though we saw our share of rusting industrial towns and small, beautiful hamlets. It was a big place, and we were cutting through the heart of our country.

  We practiced when we stopped to rest. The second night, we pulled the van and the bikes into the shelter of an abandoned factory, which helped us avoid a sudden thunderstorm. Most of the machinery had been pulled out and recycled for scrap, so we had a big, empty space to work with. Dust and spiderwebs were the only witnesses to my fire, and the night closed in around us, dark and damp.

  “I want to see how fine you can manage to control the fire,” Kamila told me, setting up a piece of wood. “You did pretty well when we were questioning the vampire, but those were heightened circumstances. I want to see you repeat it now.”

  I sighed. “Easier said than done, but I’ll try.” I felt flat compared to the anger of the fight.

  Fortunately for me, Kamila had a lot of wood with her. I made the first log explode. I couldn’t get the second one to go at all. I felt like I had that first time with Mort all over again when I hadn’t been able to do anything.

  Kamila shook her head. “Remember, Jason. It’s about passion and feeling.”

  I closed my eyes. Could I bring back the passion I’d felt with her? The rage I’d felt toward the vampires, and toward Micah, had scared me. The lust and affection I’d felt toward her and toward Tess, on the other hand, had been profound, beautiful, and sacred.

  The beam of fire I directed at the wood was laser fine and white hot. I could maintain it well enough to write our names, and the power surging through me felt pure and bright.

  “Excellent.” Kamila put the board to the side. “Now do it again.”

  I practiced the move over and over until I threw up, my stomach heaving in rebellion as the intensity of the work came to rest in my gut. Kamila left Tess with me and went out for food. I was grateful for the break.

  “Was it hard?” Tess asked, her eyes roaming over the charred wood.

  “What, turning fire into a magic marker? Yeah.” I chuckled weakly as I lay down on the cold, concrete floor. “I know I’ll get it eventually, but it’s a whole different set of muscles. If you tried to do a workout, isolating only one set of muscles you’ve never used before, you’d probably puke too.”

  She sat up a little straighter. “Okay, that much I can understand. Now that you’ve put it into logical terms, I guess.” She patted my arm and chuckled. “Look, I know everything’s moving fast fo
r you. It’s moving fast for me too, but it’s twice as bad for you. At least I had a hundred years to get used to the way things are supposed to be. You just kind of woke up and boom! There’s a war in progress, and you’re on the front lines.”

  I smiled. “It’s a lot to process. Which is why I try not to think about it.” I licked my lips. “I can’t exactly miss the old ways if I never knew them, but I’m definitely pissed at what happened to me. And I want to make them pay. I’m almost excited about that part. I can’t change what they did, but I can damn sure control how I respond.”

  “Good man.” She bent down and kissed my forehead. “You seem to be getting along okay with Kamila.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, I like her. She’s been good to me so far.”

  “She doesn’t get along with a lot of people. Most fire Ferin tend to have short fuses, and that’s Kamila to a T. She holds a grudge like you wouldn’t believe.” She looked at me out of the side of her eye. “Or maybe you would, I guess. But she’s a good one to have on our side. I’m glad she’s here.”

  I heard the van pulling into the factory. “Me too.” I struggled to my feet. “You should tell her that. I think it would go a long way toward making things better between the two of you.”

  Tess pursed her lips. She didn’t respond directly, but I didn’t expect her to.

  Kamila brought plenty of food and water. We were able to eat and bunk down, our material needs met for the night.

  We chose a watch roster because none of us wanted another vampire surprise. I took the first watch, and after a long stretch, heard the soft murmuring of two different voices coming from inside the van. I smiled to myself. I didn’t need to know what had gone wrong between those two. All I needed them to do was to fix things.

  It sounded like they were on their way to doing exactly that.

  26