Would this happen here? Would it not be as I expected? Did the vampire have problems no mortal could understand? Would these problems plague me as a vampire, torment me? Was it worth it?
Did I have a choice?
Not if I wanted to die a mortal along with my friends.
And not if I was brave enough to embrace the wildest dream, the deepest fantasy, the ultimate purpose of my existence—
“Hurry, Andy. I mean, I don’t want to rush you, I know this is kind of a heavy decision, but we’re going to die otherwise,” Dial said. I knew he had been prepped for death through all his training, but he didn’t want to die now in the hands of his former clansmen. He had a new life ahead of him with the Vampire Club and Juan.
Through the trees came the crack crack quack of a distant gun, showering leaves and twigs on us as we all ducked.
“What do I have to do?” I asked. My heart pounded in my chest harder than I ever remembered, harder even than with my friend’s older sister.
The vampire asked to be set down, preferably against a tree. Dial obliged, and once seated, Laumer looked at me weakly. “Don’t need to do much. Just need to drain your blood.”
Like he said, not much.
Chapter Forty-seven
“Get it done,” said Dial.
“You need to first drain most of your blood,” said the vampire.
I started shaking. “I’ve never done that before—”
“Here, give me both your arms,” said Dial. He pulled out a switchblade. “You may not want to watch this.”
He pushed up the sleeves of my shirt. My mouth opened to protest, but no words came out. What are you doing, Andy? an angry voice raged in my head. He’s going to cut the shit out of you. You’ve got to think about this before—
I can’t.
It’s going to change your life.
No time to think.
Forever.
“Look away, Andy. I’m sure you’re not going to want to watch this.”
I was suddenly very cold. My teeth chattered as I asked: “Y-you’re sure this has to be done? Can’t you just bite me?”
Laumer grimaced from his own pain, then answered, “It’s the only way. You need vampire blood in you and I need your human blood, and I am too weak to strike. I can’t feed while the silver is in me. I will give you my blood in its stead. Yours has to go.”
At least he cleared things up a little. I think.
“You ready?” asked Dial, and I felt him place the cold blade on my right wrist.
I nodded. Barely. I thought of Janice, and what she would do when she found out I was a vampire, and if she’d think I was as hot as Tom Cruise and Robert Pattinson—
Dial pressed the blade into my wrist and slid it silently. I jerked and convulsed. He held me tight. Too tight. My face was pressed into his chest. He would not let me see. I tried with all my might to move away. To hold my bleeding wrist.
The professor was shouting something knowledgeable. He didn’t like this at all. We shouldn’t go through with it.
It felt like there was an open space between my wrist and hand. Felt like there was nothing there. My head spun. Faster and faster.
Somebody was fumbling with my other arm, my other wrist. I could no longer stand. “Let me sit, goddammit!”
And through the spinning and approaching darkness that was clouding my thoughts, I realized what was happening. He was going to cut my other wrist. No! I cried inwardly. Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re killing me! What if this vampire thing doesn’t work?
Then you die.
Something stopped me from voicing my thoughts. Something deep within me knew this had to be done. Knew I wanted it done. Knew that I’d wanted it done for far too long to stop the process now.
So I hung limply and quietly in Dial’s arm while my second wrist was severed, gunfire still crackling around us like bloody popcorn.
* * *
I had been dealt a mortal blow. My body and mind knew it. Even though I’d understood what needed to be done to become a vampire, that did me little good now. Because stopping the process of my death now seemed impossible, no matter what forces I was dealing with. I had accepted death, and it was only a matter of a short time.
A moment’s peace meant everything to me. The most important thing in the world.
I’m not sure how long I rested or if indeed I achieved any sleep at all, but at some point, just when I seemed to be drifting away, something tugged in a part of my mind that was so incredibly deep, so incomprehensibly part of me, but not part of me, that I did not know this part of me existed before.
A tugging from the abyss. Something moved, something in me, like the most stubborn of tree roots, had been jarred loose. My last physical thought was that I suddenly realized what the thing was.
You mean it’s right there? That’s where your soul is stored? There!
It knew what to do, my soul. It knew its resting place was quickly dying, and it would have to move on. It was restless in my body, but at the same time utterly confused. The time was wrong to die. It had not been ready—had, in fact, been taken by surprise. But now it was accepting the irreversible fact of death and even looked forward to a new beginning elsewhere.
The tugging stopped, and I—yes, I, for somehow the shift from physical to spiritual had been made—felt at ease. The hard part was over, the leaving of the dead body.
It is customary for the soul to look back at its prior existence. To look at it with either fondness or scorn. All this was as real to me now as facts of life in the physical.
And that’s when I saw the vampire hunched over me or what was once me, his face pressed against my wrists. His head bobbed up and down like a pigeon’s at bread. Blood rolled down his chin, and I paused to watch this curious event before leaving, something I was allowed to do, however briefly.
And then something jerked my astral body, as if someone had pulled my arm—which was at this phase absolutely impossible. I looked at my mid-section and was surprised to see a beam of light attached to my physical body like a pliant, fuzzy string. The light beam had jerked me. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
The light beam thickened before my eyes. Below, the vampire suckled my ripped flesh. Before me the beam had doubled and now moved me more vigorously. The vampire bobbed and bobbed, his lips lapping eagerly at my blood in a repulsive yet oddly elegant mockery of sensual indulgence. The beam grew and grew. The vampire crawled on top of me, covering my body, smothering me. The beam was as thick as my former body, opening like a tunnel.
And the darkness inside began to pull me back to my physical body, as if my earthly flesh were sucking on the other end of a massive straw.
I should have been gone, long gone, going toward the light and all that. Instead, it was almost like the darkness was keeping me tied to the world. The light tube grew and grew, filling my vision, finally jerking me forward into its empty maw. I could not resist. I could do nothing except watch helplessly as I was drawn back to the ground. Quicker and quicker, until I was literally slammed into my physical body.
The light went completely out, and only darkness remained.
My soul was back, and it felt like it would never leave again. Ever.
Chapter Forty-eight
I was dead tired—and that’s what scared me. Because I wasn’t dead.
“Um, how’s it going, Andy?” It was the professor standing over me, looking as shy as a schoolboy asking his first valentine out on a date.
“Meaning?” I croaked, raising an arm and marveling at the fact there was absolutely no scar where Dial had dealt his death scratch.
I would have asked myself if this were a dream, except dreams end and you never asked such questions in a real dream. My body wanted to rest, my head wanted to sleep, but something—I could only call it the “blackness of soul”—burned away with a fire of its own.
“Meaning,” said Professor L. “Are you going to get us out of here?”
“I’m a va
mpire?”
I braced my arms at my side and momentarily caught a look at the Vampire Laumer. He was as white as when we first found him. As I proceeded to push myself up to my feet, I felt a restless stirring deep within me. Like something was caught, caged, and shut from the light forever.
Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement. Even my eye muscles felt tired and I lazily looked with disinterest. A VVVer slowly raised a pistol and took aim, and it looked like the professor was in his line of fire.
He squeezed the trigger, and I jumped forward.
And I moved too easily, too quickly. I felt out of control. Even though the professor and the VVV Brother never left my vision, even though I was still within the small clearing, I felt like I had fallen off a cliff. It was an incredible rush.
The man still had his arm up holding the gun. One eye was squinted, lining up his target, the professor was hunched over me, unblinking, mouth open, frozen, Dial was next to him, head turning just noticing the Brother. His mouth was contorted, about to shout, but it was frozen, everything frozen.
And I felt like I was falling to my death.
I moved freely among them, and yet they did not move. It was as if I was moving around in a wax museum exhibit.
The Brother’s finger was firmly wrapped around the trigger, he had pulled it, and the gun had fired. And the bullet was hovering in the air between us.
I moved over to it, my steps awkward and exaggerated. I definitely was not used to this real-time movement. I stuck my face just inches from it. It was moving, but just barely. I reached out with my thumb and forefinger and plucked it from the sky, like a shrimp mini-sandwich from a serving platter.
I moved toward the Brother while still holding the bullet. I figured that anything in my possession would be carried along as I went.
Reaching the hunter, I tore free his gun, and was very surprised to suddenly see all the fingers in his hands explode. Perhaps I tore it too quickly. The explosion happened in my time, and what was amazing was that he wasn’t even aware that it had happened yet.
Then I realized I didn’t know how to stop the speed! It had started most accidentally, my body responding to crisis. I wanted it to stop but it was already over.
And then I slowed. And then I felt as if I were up against good old resistance, reliable gravity.
The first thing I heard was Dial screaming. Then next thing was a screaming. A sort of screaming that plays on a man’s nerves.
I watched calmly as the VVV member clutched his right arm. Blood spurted from its messy stump.
In the kind of time that pain likes, the slow kind.
Chapter Forty-nine
I was a vampire. I was immortal.
A million thoughts crowded my mind, but it was too much to sort through. What would Janice think? What would my parents think? What did this mean for the future of the Vampire Studies program? Mostly, how long before I had to gnaw on somebody’s neck and suck the sweet, sweet life from them, and would I care whether it was a boy or a girl?
“You—you’ve turned, Andy,” the professor said, a mixture of reverence and shock in his old, tired voice. In a way, his own ambition had been fulfilled, though he also sounded slightly jealous.
“He saved your life, professor,” Dial said, with a touch of respect. Off in the woods, the Brother was whimpering, definitely going against his training.
“And now for the rest of us,” Laumer said, seemingly revived a little.
“Let me get used to this first,” I said.
“Plenty of time for that later,” Laumer said.
“The others will no doubt be armed with silver bullets,” Dial said, a calm sort of awe in his voice. And I realized Dial rarely, if ever, bequeathed his respect to others. “And I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, noticing with great shock that I had no air in my lungs and had to draw it in to speak. A vampire needed no oxygen, of course; only blood.
“I did not hear him come.” He nodded over to where the VVV Brother had been before darting away screaming. “He was our—their—best assassin. He was as secretive as my once-closeted sexuality.”
“Then his injuries could not be helped,” I said, not looking at him but instead at my outstretched hands. The skin was translucent, and the veins underneath glowed a deep purple. That would definitely have to be hidden once I took my place in human society.
Human society? Hell! I’m already getting used to being a blood-sucking outcast.
“There are more,” Laumer said from his sitting position. He seemed more slow to recover than me.
Dial sniffed the air. “The nearest is no more than fifty yards away, I believe.”
“Then I shall go to work,” I said. “I’m starting to understand this time-warp stuff. No wonder vampires are so hard to capture.”
Dial sniffed again. “That direction.” And he pointed to his left. “For starters.”
“What about you?” I said to Laumer. “You expect me to do all the work now?”
“Let me recover while your professor removes the remaining bullets. And watch out for the light.”
I glanced at the sun breaking through the trees, and it made my eyes hurt. I didn’t think I’d turn to smoke and ash if I stepped into full sunlight, but I suspected I’d get one hell of a sunburn. Luckily, the forest had a thick canopy, so I was spared the worst of its rays.
“The ultimate metaphor,” the professor said, rubbing his chin. “You have forever forsaken the light and now must walk in darkness.”
“To hell with walking,” I said. “I am booking it in real time now.”
“You can go but you can never return,” the professor said.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Save it for the term paper. I’ve got some VVV ass to kick right now.”
“He’s already sounding bloodthirsty,” said Laumer, with a touch of parental pride. I didn’t know what sort of relationship we had—was he my relative, my blood brother, that guy I did an embarrassing thing with that we’d never mention again, or was he just some dude who’d tricked me out of my soul to extend his own existence?
I mean, hey, I wouldn’t be the first human to ever get used, or maybe I was already thinking like a vampire—in terms of exploiting our resource pool, much the way a turkey farmer struts around the pen on Thanksgiving eve.
Five minutes as a vampire, and I was already suffering angst. I could hardly wait to set up an appointment with the school counselor, and then drain her neck and leave her bloody on the couch.
I mean, of course, I wouldn’t ever do anything like that. I was determined to be one of those good vampires, the kinds who steal blood from the hospital and own puppies and help little old ladies across the street. I would never harm a human.
Heh heh.
Corey Haim, eat your heart out.
Gunfire rattled, and I shifted into real time long enough to note the bullets were, indeed, silver.
“Back in a flash,’ I said, as the professor knelt over Laumer, so engrossed in his scientific examination that he forgot to be scared.
I left the small clearing fully intending to jog, but instead I found myself moving faster than the wind. I’d been the kind of kid who was usually picked last for kickball, the one stuck out in right field away from the action, and the one who the gym coach always called “Missie.”
And here I was, strong, fast, healthy—well, I don’t know if “undead” counts as healthy, but one thing I knew, there was a gym coach I’d have to look up once all this was over.
Chapter Fifty
I stopped my absurdly accelerated jog when I saw the first group of hunters. I ducked behind a tree to plan my strategy.
And when each head turned and looked in my direction, I knew that these guys were good. Maybe too damned skilled and deadly for a new vampire. I flexed, letting Laumer’s corrupt old blood ooze through my veins.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I would feel in my new body. All I knew was I didn’t want to fall into the old silver slumbe
r like Laumer had, with this VVV filth laughing over my coffin until the end of time.
What to do? I could grab a machine gun and shoot the bastards, offering plenty of blood to the still-weak Laumer.
I could steal all their guns, thus rendering them harmless. I could. I could. I could. The trouble being, of course, that these guys were just as harmful without guns as with them, but surely they’d realized that they’d been bested by a vampire and all further pursuit would end in writhing death.
They didn’t yet know I was a vampire, did they?
That one-armed assassin guy was still quite unconscious—and no doubt dying—from lack of blood. As far as they knew, they had plugged the one and only vampire with silver sleep, and now they just had to find him. Piece of cake.
So I had the element of surprise.
Once they saw they were dealing with another vampire, it should shift their determination down a notch or two, but they might be so macho that they’d rather fight to the death than realize it was their deaths and not mine that would end it.
I sprinted away from the first group, moving in my new superhuman speed, and soon came upon another group closing in on the small clearing.
The sky had turned from a deep purple to a brighter blue. Dawn was full on, and I wondered briefly just how exactly a real vampire would handle the sun.
I’d read all the supposed reactions to the sun’s rays, and most agree on what should happen—opinions, all opinions. I’d have the facts soon enough, but I was also racing the sun as much as I was racing an army of VVV vermin.
I took a step and immediately bolted into action. The trees sped by at an even more blurring rate. Sure, I was going fast, but I hadn’t hit real time. Faster. I dodged trees that I didn’t even comprehend. It was all a swirling fog. My body jerked and moved about as I sped by trees and bodies, moving seemingly on its own, jerking and twisting. This definitely wasn’t working.
The Vampire Club Page 14