Death Embraces

by J. C. Diem

  Everything about the dream had been horrible but a couple of details stuck out. The First and his strange grey ‘children’ not only breathed, they also ate solid food. “They’re alive again,” I concluded. A chill raced down my spine, making me shiver.

  It was common knowledge that the First had been changed from a mere human into the first vampire. Now the alien demi-god’s blood running through his veins had transformed him from being an undead vampire into a living, breathing creature once more. Of course, the whole dream was probably just a figment of my imagination.

  A figment couldn’t put claw marks in your neck, I pointed out to myself uneasily. What if it was more than just a dream? What if it was a vision? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen the future. I’d foreseen my fight with the imposter me and Luc chopping my head off. Yeah, but you already knew that was going to happen. But I’d dreamed it in almost exact detail and this dream had been just like them.

  My ability to see visions hadn’t been mentioned in the prophet’s journal. Neither had my ability to understand foreign languages. No one had the answers to the questions that were running through my mind. I was on my own and I would have to puzzle it out for myself. It occurred to me that I should write a handbook of my own but what would be the point? I was the one and only Mortis. My experiences wouldn’t be repeated by any other brand new vampires because I was unique. The thought made me feel lonelier than I’d ever felt in either my life or my unlife.

  After the sounds of humans milling about quieted, I cautiously eased out of the boot. The stolen credit card came in handy when I drove towards the exit. My latest victim mustn’t have reported his wallet stolen yet because the card was accepted and the fee was paid without fuss.

  Before heading for the highways that would eventually take me closer to my destination, I stopped to fill up the car. The attendant was female so I had to pay for the petrol instead of hypnotizing her and fleeing without paying. I only had a couple of hundred euros in the stolen wallet now. At least I didn’t have to waste it on snacks. Food of any kind no longer interested me. Blood was the only substance that would satisfy my hunger.

  Following the signs, I stuck to the speed limit and angled eastward. It was weird listening to foreign pop music. I gave up trying to translate the words in my head and just let the noise wash over me.

  I had a long, long drive ahead and little to occupy my mind. Sometimes I thought of Luc, wondering where he was and what he was doing and if he thought about me at all. Mostly, I speculated about how I would be received in Japan. I’d been warned that the Japanese hated European vampires. Hopefully, they would be benevolent about Australian ones. Otherwise, I might be in worse trouble than I’d been in before emerging from my graves.

  My dealings with the Comtesse, her fellow Councillors and the Court had ended with me being cut into eleven pieces. Surely my interaction with the Japanese vamps couldn’t be worse than that. I didn’t bother to kid myself that they would welcome me with open arms. There was a good chance I’d instead be welcomed with an axe through the head. I was hoping I could convince them I was an ally before they started hacking and stabbing. Wouldn’t they jump at the chance to stir up more trouble with the Councillors? If not, then I might very well end up in several pieces again.

  My plan to hide during the day in abandoned buildings and underground parking lots worked well for the first four days. On the fifth, I was woken from a sound sleep. I actually didn’t mind being woken up at first. I’d been dreaming that my body parts were squirming their way across the face of the earth, all heading in different directions as the sun was about to rise. Fortunately, this was just a dream and not a vision of the future.

  Wondering why I’d woken, I heard a noise just outside the car. Sitting up with a start, I froze just before bonking my head on the boot lid. Someone was standing nearby. I heard the rustle of their clothing and air whistling through a clogged nose. Feet shifted somewhere to the right. Uh oh, there are two humans out there. This can’t be good.

  “Let’s pop the trunk open,” a male voice said in a language I couldn’t identify. I wasn’t even sure what country I was in at the moment. I’d passed through too many to keep track.

  “Cover me,” the second guy said. I had a few seconds to panic while a metal rod was inserted next to the lock.

  For a second, I couldn’t recall where I’d parked the stolen car this time. Then I remembered I’d hidden it in a warehouse that didn’t look like it had been used in years. Broken glass had littered the floor but I’d navigated my way around the worst of it and had parked deep in the shadows.

  My most feared nightmare was coming true; I had been discovered by humans. Not just by any humans, if I wasn’t mistaken, they were a couple of cops. My decision to hide out in the warehouse seemed to have been a poor one. I could sense that it was still daylight and nightfall was hours away. Their timing couldn’t have been worse.

  Closing my eyes, I lay back down and went limp as the boot lid popped opened. Expecting searing light to wash over me and flames to burst from my body, I was relieved when nothing happened. The heat of the sun baked against the wall beside the car but the sun had shifted so it now lay directly overhead. It was painfully bright but I would be fine, unless they moved me.

  Twin breaths were indrawn when the two men took me in. One whistled and the other one muttered a low curse. “Is she alive?” the first guy asked.

  “I’ll check,” replied the guy who prised the boot open. Warm fingers brushed my hair aside then probed my neck. “I can’t feel a pulse and her skin is cool.”

  “What a shame,” mourned the first guy. “She was so beautiful.” I preened inwardly at the compliment before remembering how dangerous my situation was. It would be easy to hypnotise them both with one glance but I wasn’t sure if my dark magic would work during the day. It seemed prudent to simply wait and see what happened. As long as they didn’t drag me into direct sunlight, I should be ok.

  “I’ll call for the ambulance,” the second guy said and his footsteps receded. His buddy waited next to the car, keeping watch as his partner spoke into a radio. In a stroke of luck, I was in a tiny town that didn’t have the money or means to afford a forensic team. If I’d been back in the UK, a team of investigators would have been swarming over the car within the hour. My chances of escaping before being discovered as the undead would have been low.

  I had to lie motionless for twenty minutes before a vehicle finally approached. Being too big to fit through the opening my much smaller stolen car had used, it parked outside. With my eyes closed, I only had my hearing to rely on. The back door of the ambulance was swung open then a stretcher clattered to the ground. Two people wheeled it inside the warehouse. Feet and wheels periodically crunched over the broken glass. “What have we got?” The voice was male, over fifty and briskly professional.

  “Dead girl in the trunk,” one of the cops said in an obviously affected bored tone. Finding my corpse was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to them during the past year.

  “Dead girl, huh?” The over fifty guy marched over then his shadow loomed over me. He gently felt my neck before pronouncing my fate. “Yep, she’s dead alright. We’ll take her to the morgue. The doc’s away for a couple of days but he’ll take a look at her when he gets back. Let’s bag her, Senewski.”

  Two pairs of hands lifted me out of the car and onto the stretcher. Quickly and efficiently, I was bundled into a nice, snug body bag. Now that I was hidden from the killing rays of the sun, I allowed myself to relax a little. From here I’d be transported safely to the morgue without needing to worry about bursting into flames.

  While my circumstances weren’t exactly ideal, I had a couple of days to plan my escape before anyone would begin cutting me open. I’d already had my chest hacked open by Alexander the sewer vamp. It was an experience I didn’t care to repeat.

  With a clatter, the stretcher went into motion, first crunching over broken glass then rolling mo
re smoothly over uneven concrete. Heat engulfed the body bag as soon as the sun hit the plastic when I was wheeled out from the warehouse. I would have gasped if I’d had any air in my lungs. But my breathing days were over so I just winced instead.

  “It’s a shame when the pretty ones die so young,” the over fifty guy murmured to his partner as the stretcher was lifted into the back of the ambulance. He received a wordless grunt for a reply.

  Senewski climbed into the back with me and the merciless heat abated when the door slammed shut. His hand touched my face through the plastic then ran quickly down to my chest. Squeezing my breast, he voiced a nearly soundless chuckle. “Yeah, it’s a real shame,” his young, falsely cheerful voice said too quietly to be overheard by his partner in the front.

  Eeeewwww! He’s a pervert! It was difficult to cringe without actually moving but I managed it.

  Chapter Ten

  My mouth was still open a little in disbelief at being groped when the ambulance came to a stop. It had only taken a few minutes to reach our destination, proving that the town truly was tiny.

  Opening the ambulance door, Senewski jumped out. His feet thudded on pavement as the driver’s door opened. His partner joined him and they lifted the stretcher to the ground. After a short, bumpy ride in the heat, it was a relief when a door opened and I was pushed inside a building. The older guy chatted to a woman and filled out some paperwork while I waited in an agony of suspense. Then the two men transferred me to a gurney and the wait was over.

  “I’ll take her from here, guys,” the female said and the men took their leave. Humming under her breath, the woman pushed me down a hallway and through a set of swinging doors. It was much cooler in this room and I guessed we were in the morgue proper. In a town this size, there probably wouldn’t be many other corpses in residence. I tried to picture it as a small hotel but failed. A hotel for dead people. Yeah, I’m sure that idea will take right off.

  Unzipping the body bag, the female morgue worker exposed my face to the harsh fluorescent lights. She moved away and I risked opening my eyes a crack. I was in a small room with pale green walls and matching floor. Mercifully, it was without windows. A stainless steel table sat to my right. That’s where the autopsies are performed. I suppressed a shudder at the thought and returned to my study of the morgue.

  A bank of metal doors was on the wall to the left. I would be stored within one of the cold, tiny vaults before too long. Then I would be trapped in a box again. This time I didn’t have a rock or bobby pin to break my way out. Not that there seemed to be any locks on them, just handles. But how could I open it from the inside? What if I was put in head first? My feet were nowhere near as dextrous as my hands. If I get stuck, I’ll just have to kick my way out. I was comforted by the plan, even if it was hideously short on details.

  Reaching for a phone on the wall, the morgue assistant dialled a number. In her mid-thirties, she was a couple of inches shorter than me and had mousy brown hair. I caught a glimpse of her tired, drawn face as she turned and closed my eyes again. I heard the phone ringing further down the hall as well as through the ear piece. “Petir, can you come to the death chamber?” she said when it was answered after a few short rings. “We have a new arrival and I could use your help.”

  His response was in the affirmative and a door banged open somewhere close by after she hung up. After a few seconds, a guy ambled inside and stumbled to a stop. “Holy cow,” he said in whatever language he was speaking, “she’s beautiful! Are you sure she’s dead?”

  Sighing almost inaudibly, the female searched my neck then my wrist for a pulse. “I’m positive she’s dead,” she said with strained patience. I wouldn’t like anyone questioning my expertise either. Not that I was an expert at anything. “Help me get her out of the body bag.”

  “Are you going to strip her?” Petir asked a little too eagerly.

  “No,” was her curt reply and I could have sat up and kissed her. That’d give them both the surprise of their lives. “I’ll take a few samples and leave the rest to the Doctor. You know how he is when people disturb the corpses.”

  “Do you need any help?” Petir asked as he helped her to heave me out of the bag and onto the metal table.

  “I can handle it,” she replied dryly. “I’ll call you when I want to put her in the locker.”

  I sensed his reluctance to leave as he shuffled towards the door. “Just give me a yell if you need me to strip her off.”

  “Pervert,” she muttered beneath her breath as the door closed behind her assistant. I agreed with her whole heartedly and wondered what samples she was going to take.

  Rummaging in her pocket, she pulled something out and put it down on the bench. I heard a click then a faint squeaking noise. She drew close enough for me to feel her breath on my face then thumbed open my eyelid and shone a torch at my eyeball. I came very close to jumping in alarm at the unexpected brightness.

  “The pupil is unusually large,” she said thoughtfully and scribbled a note on a piece of paper. It was probably my chart. Searching through my pockets, she found the wallet I’d stolen a few days ago. “The wallet does not belong to the young woman,” she said out loud. It occurred to me that the squeaking noise was an old fashioned tape recorder and she was recording her findings verbally as well as on paper.

  Lifting my stolen jumper and t-shirt, she searched for signs of what had killed me without stripping me off completely. Rolling me onto my side, she searched my back and found nothing. “There are no visible signs of death. There are also no signs of rigor or pooling of blood,” she said in a tone that was partly wondering and partly disturbed.

  My eyes popped open when she unzipped my jeans and eased them and my undies down to just below my butt. A thermometer was inserted into a place that wasn’t designed for things to be inserted into. It was just as well that I was facing away from her because my expression would no doubt reflect my outraged embarrassment. She left the thermometer in my butt for about a thousand years before pulling it out and checking it.

  “Hmmm,” she sounded more puzzled than ever now. “Her body temperature is barely twenty degrees Celsius.” No wonder I’m cold all the time! “It should be much warmer after being in the trunk of a car for at least several hours.” Thankfully, she pulled my clothes back up and rolled me onto my back. Lifting my jumper and shirt again, she placed an icy cold stethoscope over my dead heart. There was nothing going on inside my chest so she didn’t have any nasty surprises there.

  After rummaging around in a drawer, she pushed my right sleeve up. I cracked an eye open and watched her take a sample of my blood. Her brown eyes widened when she saw how dark and sluggish the fluid was. “What the?” Holding the vial up, she frowned and gave me a strange look. “The Doc is going to shit birds when he sees this.” I snapped my eye shut again and heard her cross the room and open another door. From the faint clanking of glass being placed on a shelf, I surmised she had stashed the sample in a fridge I hadn’t noticed during my previous inspection.

  At my side again, she pushed my sleeve back down then carefully and methodically used a sharp tool to scrape the crud out from beneath my fingernails into small plastic bags.

  Noticing an anomaly on my palm, she took a closer look at my right hand. Straightening my fingers, she turned my hand over and inhaled when she saw the cross on my palm. She murmured what sounded like a prayer when she discovered the second cross on my other palm. “I have never seen anything this strange before,” she said to the tape recorder and noted her findings down on the chart. “The subject has cross marks on both of her palms. They don’t appear to have been branded or burned onto her. It’s almost as if the crosses were pressed very tightly against her flesh for a long time and the marks became embedded on her palms.”

  It was a good guess but not entirely accurate. I’d held the crosses very tightly but it hadn’t taken all that long for the marks to appear. I wasn’t the least bit surprised that she’d never seen anything like me before.
It was embarrassing to be dragged into a morgue and to be made ready for dissection. Somehow, I couldn’t see Luc, or any other vampire for that matter, ending up in this predicament. Nope, just me. No one can ever find out about this. Other vampires would laugh their arses off if they found out about my little trip to the morgue. It was a shame I could live without.

  Pushing open one of the swinging doors, she called out for Petir this time instead of using the phone. He arrived quickly enough that he must have been lurking nearby. For all I knew, he’d been peeking through the small windows in the swinging doors when the thermometer had been residing in my butt.

  A sheet was whisked over me from head to toe then they lifted me back onto the gurney. I took a short ride then was stashed inside a cosy yet icy metal coffin.

  Sounds were muffled inside the meat locker but my hearing was acute enough to determine when the pair finally left for the day. Motionless, I listened hard for any further sounds to indicate anyone else was in the building. All was quiet and at last I was free to escape.

  If I’d still been able to breathe, frost would have formed with every exhale of air. The last time I’d been this cold was when Alexander’s shadow had tried to kill me. The offspring of the First had the ability to suck my unlife right out of my body. I wasn’t in quite as dire shape this time, I was just suffering from cold rather than lack of energy. Still, my limbs were reluctant to respond to my mental commands.

  As per my usual crappy luck, I’d been placed in the locker head first so my feet were closest to the door. The slick metal insides gave me no purchase but I managed to squirm my way forward. I stopped when the soles of my stolen shoes were touching the door.

  Drawing my knees back until they touched the top of the locker, I was about to slam my feet against the door then I heard a noise. Freezing, I listened carefully and heard the unmistakable sound of an outer door being opened.