Even as he thought this, Terrill saw big Jeremy walking his way with a grim expression. The officious fat man, the mayor, and his brethren on the town council thought they ran the town, but it was Jeremy and his thugs who really had the final say. Terrill didn’t wait around to see what Jeremy wanted. The previous day, he’d placed some large bets on certain participants in the tournament, knowing he himself was unlikely to win every event. Now, as Jeremy undoubtedly knew, he could never pay up.
Terrill ran.
He remained in hiding for weeks, doing odd jobs, even begging. He had no skills, he soon discovered. None at all––except drinking. His once-fine clothes turned to rags, his hair grew shaggy, and he began to stink. He slept in barns, sometimes even in the open.
The only people who would feed and shelter him were the very poorest of citizens, people he had once barely noticed existed. They lived on a plane below the servants, below the tradesmen, below the yeoman farmers. They’d always been in the background, bowing to him. Now they looked on him with sympathy and gave what little they had to share.
After one particularly wretched couple gave him some bread, Terrill broke down in tears. He’d been sitting by the side of the road, watching them with pity as they passed by, but it was they who took pity on him, giving him the last of their food. As they walked away, he buried his head in his hands and cried.
“What’s the problem, son?” he heard someone say.
Terrill looked up to see a man standing over him with his hand outstretched. He took the offered hand and the man raised him to his feet.
“Come with me, young man, and we’ll talk over some drinks,” the man said.
The stranger led Terrill to a tavern that was little more than four walls and a mud floor, and sat him down at a rough-planked table.
The man looked young––not a wrinkle to be seen––but he had gray hair and a gray beard. His eyes were bright, curious. He was dressed in the finest of clothes, but he wasn’t noble, Terrill sensed; instead, he was one of those men who had made their own wealth without the benefit of a privileged family. Once, Terrill would have looked down on such a man, but now he had nothing but admiration for the fellow.
Four drinks later, he was telling the man that. “I was a fool. I thought I was a nobleman when I was but a bastard. The only reason I was accepted was for my money. I wish I had it to do over again. I would give to the poor instead of the rich.”
The man––he’d said his name was Michael, but had given no family name––looked at Terrill intently. “I am in need of an assistant,” he said. “I’ll pay you well, and you’ll be fed and clothed.”
“I would be honored,” Terrill said.
They didn’t make it to Michael’s home that night. In the darkness of a country lane, Terrill sensed the man come up behind him. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and then nothing.
#
Terrill woke inside a dirt hole. There were planks over his head, and he could see sunlight through the thin cracks between them. He put his fingers through one of the gaps, and it was as if someone had cut into them. He yelped and pulled his fingers back. In the dim light, he could see that they were blackened, as if they had been burned. They certainly hurt as if they had been burned. He groaned, but after a few minutes, the pain receded and his fingers appeared to be healed.
Being stubborn, Terrill tried again, with the same results. So he stayed in the hole for the rest of the day, wondering if he’d been buried and left for dead, or if perhaps he was dead and the fire outside was hell.
When the light faded, he slid the planks aside and sat up.
Michael was sitting on a log a few feet away, and met his eyes.
“What did you do to me?” Terrill asked.
“I’ve turned you into a creature of the night, who lives on blood, who will burn in the daylight, whom God has forsaken, and who is shunned by mankind.”
How is that different from what I’ve been? Terrill wondered. Hiding at night, stealing from others, forsaken by all. He accepted Michael’s explanation right away. For one thing, he could feel it in his blood: he wasn’t tired anymore, but he was hungrier than ever. It was no more disconcerting than finding out that he wasn’t a noble, wasn’t rich, but was a bastard and destitute.
“You will be stronger and faster than any human, but you must understand how to handle these new powers,” Michael said. “I will teach you the rudiments. It will be up to you to learn them––or not.”
Later that night, Michael led him to a pasture that contained a single, scrawny cow. “I purchased this for you,” he said.
Overwhelmed by hunger, Terrill fell upon the unfortunate beast. The savagery of his own behavior amazed him. He didn’t just suck the cow’s blood; he tore the animal apart, and he delighted in its pain. When he was finished, he looked over at Michael. “You purchased it?” he asked. “Why didn’t you simply take it?”
“Should I deprive a poor man of his livestock?” Michael asked, looking at him curiously. “Don’t you remember what you said last night? About pitying the poor?”
“That was last night,” Terrill said.
Michael looked disappointed, but not surprised. “Perhaps someday…”
Disappointed or not, over the next few weeks, Michael was true to his word and taught Terrill to survive. Terrill learned that there were things he should do if he didn’t want humans hunting him down: avoid contact with humans as much as possible, try to feed only when necessary, and destroy all evidence. Move along after a kill. Try not to kill in the same way each time.
“One last thing,” Michael said one night. “If you follow these suggestions and live long enough, you will need money. You can accumulate wealth by investing small amounts and leaving it with the bankers. You’ll forget about the investments, and then one day find that you’re rich.”
Terrill nodded. When Michael left, Terrill didn’t try to stop him. The whole time the gray-haired man had been with him, he’d had to hold himself back. He’d never seen Michael kill a human, only animals, though he hadn’t stopped Terrill from tracking down Peter Martel and his former friends and dispatching swift and brutal justice.
After they parted, Terrill saw Michael every few generations. It was as if the older vampire was checking up on him periodically. Each time, Michael––who by then was legendary among the other vampires––went away again.
Terrill tried to live as Michael had suggested, quickly seeing the wisdom of his advice. He began to think of Michael’s suggestions as rules, though he didn’t formalize them as the Rules of Vampire until hundreds of years later.
Chapter 6
Jamie stayed in her motel room for a full day and night. She turned on the radio and TV, but there was little local news of any interest. The town newspaper was a weekly and wouldn’t be out for another few days. She had no way of knowing what had happened to Stuart.
Was he dead? Had he Turned? Were they looking for her?
What would Horsham do? Jamie wondered. He’d only mentored her for a few days, but she’d been so overwhelmed by the bloodthirst that she’d barely paid attention to him. He’d mentioned something about the Rules of Vampire––but then, he’d also scoffed at them. She was pretty sure one of the Rules was something along the lines of “Get out of town, fast.”
Jamie was broke. The motel was going to kick her out any day now. She had nowhere to go. Thinking about that, she would have broken down and cried if she had still been human. But to her amazement, she was unworried. She’d deal with whatever came. She was stronger and faster than any human; better equipped to survive.
The next day, it was cloudy and raining, and Jamie ventured out, protected by her hoodie. She walked to the local market and glanced at the headlines on the front pages in the newspaper racks, but there was nothing about a murder in Crescent City. A cop car drove by and slowed, but then kept going.
She went into the store and looked around. When she’d first run away from home, she’d survived mostl
y by shoplifting, and the skills came back to her automatically. She lifted a box of L’Oreal hair color and was out the door before the clerk even knew she was there. She hunched her shoulders and walked back to the motel. By the time darkness rolled around, she was no longer a redhead, but a blonde.
It was hard to hide the freckles, especially with her extremely pale skin, but when she looked in the mirror, it seemed to her that she was a completely different woman. Even Sylvie wouldn’t recognize me now, she thought.
She felt a twinge. Sylvie…
Why did she still care? Her sister was part of her human existence, and that Jamie was dead. She found that she had few fond memories of her father and mother or her friends––and certainly not of Richard Carlan or any of her other loser boyfriends. She had almost shoplifted a box of black hair dye, but an image of her sister had come to her and her hand had plucked the next box over. I should have stayed in Bend, no matter the consequences, and watched over my little sister, just like I always have.
But she remembered her Maker, Terrill, looking at her in pity. She couldn’t stand it. She’d run away, intending never to look back.
As soon as it was dark, Jamie went out to make the rounds of the local taverns, most of them playing country music, which she couldn’t stand.
She was sitting at the bar in one of them when a man moved close to her. He drew up a stool, turned toward her, and gave her a dazzling smile. She instantly distrusted him. There was something strange about him. She couldn’t help herself––she sniffed, trying to get a whiff of his blood.
He looked amused. It was as if he had noticed her sniffing and knew what it meant. The bar was loud and noisy and smelled of spilled beer and whiskey, and Jamie couldn’t quite get a read on him.
At first, she thought he was a slender and fit old man, because his full head of hair was pure silver. But when she looked at his face, she couldn’t see a single wrinkle. Based on his appearance alone, he wasn’t older than his late twenties.
To hell with him, she thought. She turned away.
He had the effrontery to laugh. “Come now, you’re here to pick up a man. Don’t I fit the bill?” he said lightly.
“Screw you,” she said.
“If you’d like.”
“Yeah. Clever. Go away.”
“As you please,” he said. He looked disappointed––but in a mocking way. Yeah, I don’t need this type of guy, Jamie thought. She sent out “Stay away!” signals for most of the rest of the evening. Finally, she calmed down.
She shouldn’t have been hungry already, but when a cowboy tried to pick her up, she let him. She took him out behind the bar and let him lift her dress; then she said, “No, show me your money first.”
He slapped her and pushed her against the wall.
She tore his neck out without a second thought, drinking his blood in as messy a way as possible; anything to drive away the human part of her. Sylvie would want no part of me.
She ate his face and his fingers, then threw up. When she was done retching, she ate the rest of him.
#
Jamie woke in the bathtub of the motel room the next morning. Someone was pounding on her door. In a few moments, unless she missed her guess, the motel manager––who was a pencil-necked creep––would use his key to barge in. She turned on the shower, and as soon as she had washed off the cowboy’s blood, she got out… just as the manager opened the door.
She stood in front of him, naked, and smiled.
Jamie wanted to tear off his face, but instead she let him push her back onto the bed. He was done in seconds, it seemed. After he left, she got back into the shower and washed and washed until the hot water turned cold, and then she stayed there and washed some more.
#
The next night, Jamie went to an all-night diner and waited for the inevitable proposition. This time, she took the man’s money, not his life. She checked out of the motel she’d been staying in and walked a mile down the road to the next cheap motel. There seemed to be no end of them on the highway that ran along the beach.
#
“Out, lady. We don’t allow your kind here.”
“What are you talking about?” Jamie asked. She was standing behind the motel room door half-dressed, which didn’t help the situation.
“You know what I’m talking about. Get out of my motel, you slattern!”
Slattern? She almost laughed at the fat little motel manager. When she’d first moved in, she’d had a nice chat with the man, who had proudly announced that he was a writer and that this motel gig was just something he was doing to earn money until he got discovered.
“I haven’t done anything,” she protested.
“Yet!” he shouted. “I know your kind. I saw that man go into your room last night… and he wasn’t the first!”
She sighed. She really didn’t want to argue. It was time to move on anyway. Problem was, her latest john had snuck off without paying, and she was broke.
“One more night?” she pleaded.
“I want you out by noon or I’m calling the cops.” He stomped away.
She got dressed as fast as she could, wishing she had time to take a shower, because she could still smell the alcohol and cigarettes of the john on her. Her clothes needed washing; her backpack was falling apart. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Slattern, indeed, she thought.
It was twelve-thirty by the time she closed the motel room door behind her. She saw a police car pull into the alcove by the lobby. The two Mutt and Jeff cops from the Fourth of July got out. The tall cop glanced her way and hesitated, then followed his partner into the office.
Robert Jurgenson, Jamie thought. You handsome man. She was ashamed, suddenly. She didn’t want him seeing her this way.
She hoisted her backpack and hurried off in the other direction. It started raining before she had walked more than a few hundred yards. Perfect, she thought. Her sandals splashed into a puddle, sending mud up her shin. Just perfect.
All my problems would be solved if I used my speed and strength to prey on these humans, she thought. It would be so easy. Just take them and kill them.
But Terrill had shown her that being a vampire didn’t mean you had to be a monster. He’d imposed a rule upon himself that he wouldn’t kill humans. Perhaps Jamie would have followed the example of Horsham, who hadn’t given a damn, but the image of her little sister always seemed to glimmer at the sides of her vision, as if Sylvie was with her every step of the way.
Jamie didn’t want to kill, but she couldn’t always help it. She wasn’t that strong. The bloodlust would overwhelm her, and she would come to herself with a dead man in her grasp and little memory of how he had gotten there. It was pretty clear what her trigger was: an abusive or aggressive man. No women, no children; and any man who acted with respect toward her was usually safe.
So far, though, all her victims had been losers––there had been very little money in their pockets, or anything else of worth. She needed to find herself a rich abuser type, but she was looking so… so slatternly that she was unlikely to attract such a man.
Jamie walked down the highway, trying to figure out how she was going to book a motel room with no credit card and no money down. It would be nearly impossible, unless she found a manager who could be paid in a different way.
The rain was bad enough, but when the clouds started to part and blue skies appeared, she hurried her pace. She hadn’t yet reached the next motel before the sun burst out from behind a cloud and shot agonizing rays of pain onto her. She staggered and cried out. She stretched the fabric of her hood with her vampire strength, just short of tearing it, shoved her hands into her pockets, put her head down, and kept walking.
Chapter 7
The undergrowth on the Northwest coast is thick, growing into dense hedges and lining every vacant lot. As the sunlight became brighter and seemed to saturate the air, invading every gap in her clothing, Jamie started looking for shelter; any kind of shelter.
At the edge of a muddy, cracked parking lot, she saw a small hole in a thatch of blackberry bushes. She ducked into the hole and crawled deeper in, feeling the thorns catching at her hoodie. Whatever animal had created this tunnel used it often, for it widened the further she went.
When she emerged on the other side, it was as if she had found a fairyland. It took her a few moments to realize she hadn’t accidentally entered someone’s house. Except for the fire pit at the center of the clearing, it looked like a shabby but genteel living room. She looked up and saw planks and tarps. The walls consisted of branches woven so thickly that they looked solid, and the floor was a mishmash of carpet pieces. It felt comfy, warm, and inviting. It was both dry and out of the sunlight. Jamie immediately relaxed.
Then she noticed the three men sitting comfortably in chairs on the other side of the “room.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“No one is,” the eldest of the trio laughed. “We don’t exist. This is the land of the forgotten.”
She didn’t know what to say. The men didn’t seem alarmed, just curious. They were rough looking, bearded and longhaired, with tattered clothes, but Jamie had developed a sixth sense for how threatening men were, and she felt nothing but goodwill from this bunch.
“Sit down, make yourself comfortable,” the old man said. “I’m Billy. This scrawny fellow is Cam, and the guy who can’t stop staring at you is Patrick.”
“I’m Jamie,” she said. She almost felt like curtsying, and she had a memory of introducing herself to her first-grade teacher.
Billy got up from his wicker chair and motioned her into it. He went over to one side of the enclosure, where there was a small table laden with plates and cups. He poured some coffee into one of the cups and handed it to her.
The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 2): Rule of Vampire Page 3