Immortal Remains 2 - 30 Days of Night

by Steve Niles

  “A transplant?”

  “The donor didn’t need it anymore.”

  Mitch didn’t respond, and Dane didn’t want to continue on the subject. Instead, he pointed to a warehouse, yellow in the glow of a couple of skewed floodlights. “She’s in there.”

  Mitch pulled his cab into the driveway, stopping only when a locked gate barred the way. “Come on,” Dane said. He opened his door. Mitch hesitated, then followed. Dane glimpsed the gun in Mitch’s fist.

  Dane had taken three steps toward the warehouse when the shadows came alive.

  The flap and flutter of clothing sounded like wings in the night. Shoes scraped on the pavement. Dane spread his feet, stabilizing himself, ready.

  The first one slammed into him from his right, stinking of sour blood, fangs gnashing near Dane’s ear. Dane crashed his elbow into the vampire’s chin. The blow sent the other bloodsucker cartwheeling away.

  Dane whirled toward Mitch. One was closing on the former cop. Mitch tried to raise his weapon, but Dane saw that the vampire was already too close. Mitch’s first shot would miss, and there wouldn’t be a second.

  Lunging, Dane caught the back of the vampire’s collar and yanked. The attacker staggered backward. Dane threw an arm around his neck and twisted.

  The vampire looked up at him, eyes wild. “I can finish you,” Dane threatened. “Or you can tell me what’s going on here.”

  It responded by spitting blood at Dane’s face. Dane closed his eyes but felt it land, hot and wet, on his cheek. Dane twisted more, felt the tendons and small bones in the neck and shoulders giving way.

  Mitch’s gun went off, three times, echoing down the empty streets. Dane threw the injured vampire to one side and started toward Mitch again, in case he needed to run interference. Before he reached the cab driver, two more of them charged from the darkness, driving Dane to the ground beneath them. Over the rustle of the vampires tearing at him, he heard two more gunshots.

  “Mitch!” he shouted. Mitch might have answered, but it was hard to tell with claws snagging Dane’s head. He drove his fists out, connecting with hard, muscled bodies. He punched again. Claws bit into Dane’s neck—they were trying to tear his head off. He took in momentary flashes: long, dark, greasy hair; a thick, blunt-nosed, full-lipped face. Like him—like most of their kind—they wore black clothing.

  Dane wrenched his head from one’s grasp, the claws gouging his flesh as he did, and clamped his teeth down on the vampire’s hand. It tasted dead, rancid, but the vampire screamed and released Dane. He bumped into the other one, and Dane took advantage of their momentary distraction to grab the second one’s legs and topple him onto the first.

  Finally free of their restricting forms, he saw that Mitch remained upright, the Smith & Wesson clutched in both hands, a look of openmouthed amazement on his face.

  And in the east, the first golden glimmerings of morning lit the sky.

  The attacking vampires saw it, too, and scrambled.

  Dane let them go and grabbed Mitch’s sleeve. “Mitch, we’ve got to get inside!”

  “Why?”

  “Sun’s coming up!”

  “Should we get back to the car?”

  “Too late for that,” Dane said. “The warehouse.”

  Dane had another reason for wanting to go inside. The attack had scrambled the scents, distracting him, but now that the others were gone, he smelled her again, stronger than ever.

  With Mitch following close behind, Dane led the way through a doorway in the high fence surrounding the property. They left the cab where it was. From the looks of the place, Dane guessed it had been abandoned for some time, so although the Crown Vic blocked the drive, it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.

  “I saw someone run out of here,” Mitch said. “I took a couple of shots at him, but I guess I missed.”

  “Or you just didn’t get the head.”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  Around a corner, a doorway stood open, gaping darkly, like an invitation to hell.

  “In there?” Mitch said.

  “Looks that way.” Dane tasted the air.

  She was definitely inside.

  And someone else had been, very recently. Someone with a powerful presence. Not just an odor, but something more than that. Almost an aura, if an aura could be detected with senses other than sight.

  Inside, Dane smelled the river.

  The river soaked into everything around here, filling the pores of wood, getting under the paint on metal walls, as if the thickly humid air was just river water in disguise, leaving its mark everywhere. Beneath the river stink was stale urine, mold, rot. The next bad hurricane would probably knock the building down. The concrete floor was slick, glistening with weeds and mushrooms growing up through cracks. A dozen feet in, the faint light of sunset failed to penetrate. Mitch stayed close to Dane.

  “I can’t see shit in here,” Mitch remarked, the barely concealed panic evident in his voice.

  “I know. Don’t worry, there’s nothing to see.” Almost literally. The bulk of the vast space had been one empty room, support posts rising up into the blackness of the rafters overhead. Dane saw spiderwebs thick enough to snare rhinos, broken-down shelving units, newspapers and fast-food bags, malt liquor cans, and candy wrappers left behind by squatters who had occupied the place over the last several years, and not much else.

  At least they would be safe from the sun’s rays. Dane wondered if the vampires outside had found shelter in time. Not that he owed them any sympathy or solidarity. He had been pulling his punches, trying not to kill them until he knew what was going on.

  Obviously, they hadn’t been operating under the same guidelines.

  “What about the woman we’ve been following?” Mitch asked. “Is she in here?”

  “Should be.” Dane peered through the darkness. Finally he spotted a staircase made of two-by-fours and plywood hammered together, leading up to a kind of shallow loft. “Up there.”

  Mitch nodded anxiously. His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, but he still carried the pistol close to his collarbone, cradled in both hands. A 9mm round wouldn’t do much damage to a vampire, Dane knew, but if he could group a few of them in the right spot he might be able to take one out.

  Dane thought the immediate threat was over, though. He’d been wrong before, but he didn’t smell any undead around anymore, just the trace scents that meant they had been here. Now the overwhelming odor was of the young woman taken from the house, the one with the odd under-scent that Dane couldn’t figure out.

  He stepped onto the lowest stair, then climbed two more. They creaked under his weight, the half-inch plywood old and warped. Too much weight on the staircase would, he was afraid, collapse it entirely. But Mitch, not willing to let Dane get out of sight, came up right behind him. The staircase complained and shuddered. Dane took two more steps. The wood felt spongy underfoot, but it held.

  Struts of steel cable supported the loft area, which was floored with the same half-inch board. When Dane stepped onto it from the staircase, the whole structure moaned and swayed. He gripped the handrail, a two-by-four nailed on top of a series of upright four-bys—not that it would do any good if the whole thing went crashing to the floor.

  “Jesus,” Mitch said. “This is one wobbly platform.”

  “Strong enough, I guess,” Dane said. He pointed toward what looked like a bundle of rags lying in the middle of the floor. The dust caking the boards around it had been smudged. “There. There she is.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Dane could hear a heartbeat and faint breathing. Not in great shape, but alive. “No. She’s been better, but they didn’t kill her.”

  “That’s a first, then.”

  “Maybe they wanted her for something else.” Dane retracted his fangs, warmed his skin. He thought she was conscious, if only barely, and the last thing he wanted was for her to think he was another of her attackers. When he guessed he could pass for human, he went to her side, k
nelt on the creaking plywood.

  She was young, he’d been right about that. Her skin was a creamy cocoa color, her hair black and soft. When he touched her shoulder her eyes fluttered open, a surprising sea green. She started, as if he had woken her. “Ahh!”

  “Shh,” he said. “It’s okay, we’re friends. Are you hurt?”

  She made a small noise in the back of her throat and tried to scrabble away from him, but he held her still, afraid that if she was injured, trying to escape would only make it worse. Already a bruise showed on her left cheek, just below her eye, and her neck showed the marks of rough hands. “Honest, we’re here to help you. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal.”

  “How did you…who…?”

  “Don’t try to ask questions. We’re here to help you,” Dane said, keeping his voice soothing, his touch light. “Just tell me, are you hurt anywhere? Any broken bones?”

  Tears filled her eyes and started to run. “He…oh my God in heaven, he…”

  “What is it?” Mitch asked. He leaned toward her. “Oh, Christ.”

  “What?” Dane asked.

  “Dane—she’s been raped.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I’m telling you.”

  Dane realized he knew better than to argue. Mitch had spent years on the police force and had no doubt encountered more victims of sexual assault than Dane or anyone had a right to. While this act by his kind was extremely rare, it wasn’t completely unheard of. Since the undead thought of humans as nothing more than food, being sexually attracted to one would be like a human being turned on by a cow.

  But rape was less about sexual attraction than about power. And, oh, were vampires all about power.

  The Headsman had killed dozens of people and had taken others away for reasons yet to be determined.

  Had he violated the others like this as well? Was that part of his pattern…or a new, macabre twist?

  What the hell is going on here? Dane thought.

  7

  “WE NEED TO get her to the hospital,” Mitch insisted.

  “No! No doctors!” the woman cried. Mitch and Dane had moved to the far edge of the loft platform, but didn’t try to cut her out of the conversation. “I don’t want to see no doctors!”

  “You’ve been injured,” Mitch replied. “Pretty badly, from the looks of it.”

  “She’s right, though,” Dane said. “If we take her to the hospital, they’ll have to do a police report.”

  “They should anyway,” Mitch said. “She was taken from her home by force. They’ll be looking for her. We have to let the task force know we found her.”

  “Mitch…I thought you understood by now that we’re dealing with something the task force is completely unqualified to handle.”

  Mitch didn’t answer. His lips were clamped together so tight they had disappeared. He held on to the rail with both hands, his gun tucked into his pants again. Finally, gazing into the blackness of the warehouse, he spoke. “We can’t take care of her here.”

  “And we can’t leave,” Dane pointed out. “Not until dark. At least I can’t. If she needs medical attention, we have to provide it.”

  “You a doctor?”

  “I’ve picked up some knowledge over the years.”

  “Got any equipment? Even a sterile space?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then what can you do for her?”

  “I don’t know. I can start by not getting her killed. The Headsman left her here because he knew we were outside and coming in. He couldn’t get away with her. If she goes home or into a hospital—anyplace we can’t protect her—he’ll come back and finish the job. He’ll either kill her or abduct her again.”

  Mitch didn’t seem to like it. Dane didn’t either, but he didn’t really see a choice. He could let Mitch use his cell to call 911. EMTs and cops would come. He would be forced out into daylight, unless he could find a spot in the rafters to hide.

  At any rate, the woman would be taken away, to a hospital where she would be vulnerable to the killer as soon as night fell. Or after examination, if she had no major injuries, she might be released. Would she go back to the house she had been taken from, where presumably any other family members had been killed or similarly abducted? Not likely, since the cops wouldn’t have released it yet. Where, then? A friend’s place, a hotel? Her world had been turned inside out. She needed safety and security until it could be resettled.

  And Mitch’s plan offered only more danger.

  “Fine,” Mitch said. “For now, we do it your way. Unless she has life-threatening injuries—then we call an ambulance and take our chances.”

  “Agreed.” Dane went back to the woman’s side. She had curled into a ball, sobbing gently.

  “I’m right here,” he said softly, wanting to warn her before he touched her arm. “I want to look you over, see what kind of shape you’re in. I’m not a doctor, but I know something about medicine. I promise I won’t touch you any place you don’t want me to, okay? All you have to do is tell me.”

  “I…I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not okay. You’ve been traumatized, assaulted. Your home was broken into. Two police officers were killed there, trying to help you. I’m sorry to tell you that whoever else was in there was probably killed, too, or else taken away like you were.”

  “No one else, just me and Mrs. Waylons,” she said. “She’s older. I work for her, take care of her. I guess I didn’t take such good care after all.”

  “There was nothing you could have done to help her, believe me,” Dane said, glad that she was talking. She had been wearing a cotton nightgown and a terrycloth robe. Both had been ripped, the nightgown shredded, but she had rolled the fabric around herself, covering herself with it.

  “Look into my eyes,” he said soothingly, hypnotically. “Can I examine you?”

  Her face immediately slackened as his penetrating gaze fought to overcome her terror, her voice dropping to a murmur. “He…he hurt my face. Choked me, hurt my arm, dragging me around. My hip. I don’t think anything’s broke.”

  Dane pulled no punches. “And he sexually assaulted you. Raped you.”

  She squeezed her eyes together as if she could make the memory go away. Her lower lip quivered and her head gave a barely perceptible nod.

  “Did he do that at the house, or here?”

  “There. After he killed Mrs. Waylons. He made me watch him kill her, and then he…then he did it.”

  “We’ve been looking for him,” Dane told her. “I’m sorry we didn’t find him before he hurt you. But we definitely will find him, I promise you that.”

  “He the one that’s been on TV?”

  “Yes, he’s the one who’s been in the news. The one they’re calling the Headsman.” Dane pulled the fabric away from her throat, looked at the bruising there. The Headsman had throttled her, rubbed the skin but probably hadn’t broken anything. Dane touched her gently. “What’s your name? I’m Dane.”

  “Ananu Reid,” she said. “Most folks call me Ana.”

  “Ananu is beautiful. Excuse me.” He drew the torn nightgown away from her breasts, which also showed some bruising, and her ribs. She shifted onto her back, giving him access there. “Tell me more about your name. There must be a story behind that.”

  “I was a twin,” Ananu said. “My mama’s people were from Nigeria, and they have a myth, an ancient Fon legend about divine twins. Nyohwe Ananu and Da Zdoji were Earth deities, the twin children of the twin-faced god called Mawu-Lisa. I always liked Ananu, but my brother Zdoji, he went by Joey.”

  He pressed on her ribs. They seemed intact, although she winced under the pressure. “I can’t say I blame him. Where is he?”

  “Dead. So are my parents.”

  “You have green eyes,” Dane said. “You’re not just African.”

  “Daddy was a white man. Not as white as you, but you’re pretty damn pale. You look like those European royalty dudes, used to powder their faces.”


  Damn. He must have misjudged his skin temperature, let it slip in the dark of the warehouse and the excitement of finding her alive. He hadn’t expected her to be able to see so clearly here, but then again, she had been in the gloom for a long time. “I keep out of the sun pretty much,” he said, unconsciously touching his own cheek. “Skin cancer, you know. How did they meet, your parents?”

  “In Baltimore, when she was in college. After they got married they moved to Savannah and he opened a shoe store. She did his books and also worked in some office. Like financial stuff.”

  Dane pulled back the fabric more, leaving her genital area covered for now. He ran his fingers down her hips, noting which points caused her to wince or moan. “How long since they died?” Anything to keep her mind away from the moment.

  “Daddy was shot during a holdup in the summer of ’99. Mama almost got remarried three years later, but the car she and her fiancé was in got hit by a truck out near Bluffton, on the way to see some friends of his on Hilton Head.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Dane said. Both for her losses and for what he was about to do.

  He gingerly pulled the last scrap of fabric away, exposing her genitalia. She instinctively pressed her thighs together, and he had to hold them, prying them apart. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t hemorrhaging. Seeing some bruising but no blood, he heaved a sigh of relief, and broke off the hypnotic contact.

  The results were immediate as the horror of Ananu’s ordeal came flooding back in her eyes. “God, what if I’m pregnant?” she exclaimed. “I can’t get pregnant!”

  “When was your last cycle, Ananu?” he asked her, not bothering to point out that what she feared was nearly impossible.

  “I’m just about to start.” She smiled for the first time since he’d found her, just a flash of teeth, grim and humorless. “PMS and now this, right?”

  “Then you should be okay,” he said. “If you’re worried about it…”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably okay.”

  “You understand I can’t check you for…other things, though.”

  “Like what?”