Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  So I settled down to trying to forget mom and dad’s unearthly demise, and concentrated on getting stronger. After two days, I was on my feet and walking myself to the restroom. Another two days, I sat on the bed with my clothes on, waiting on the doctor to bring me my release papers.

  The middle of December can be a dicey time for temperatures in Northern Arizona; you never quite know what you’re going to get. Sometimes winter rolls off the Rockies like magma from a volcano; it covers and waits ‘til April to melt it away. Other years, it bowls up from the desert and pushes a warm blanket into the foothills, keeping us warm for months.

  This year, it didn’t seem to know what to do. One day kinda warm, then frigid the next.

  When I got out of the hospital, I shivered with the cold. I don’t know if it was the chill in the air, or the fact that I might bite Mary-Christine’s neck off. I mean, she’d been great about the whole ‘not knowing if I’m a vampire’ thing, but we’d hardly been intimate in the hospital. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure where I stood with her, or even if I stood at all.

  My whole life felt like a huge big question mark.

  I didn’t know where I was going to live.

  I didn’t know about me and Mary-Christine.

  I didn’t know about my financial future.

  I didn’t know if I was a vampire.

  I didn’t know about school anymore. I mean, with Christmas looming, I wasn’t going back to school before the break. For all its importance for the last fourteen years, school all seemed so useless; so petty and unimportant.

  All in all, it felt a pretty crappy, standing outside the front door of the Flagstaff Medical Center, waiting for Dave to bring the car around. Mary-Christine stood by my side, but there seemed little connection between us.

  I got into the front seat, and we didn’t even talk much on the way home.

  I insisted I get dropped off at my own door, and I waved goodbye as I walked up the drive.

  The house hadn’t changed. Of course, the carpets had been professionally scrubbed, and the table and chairs were back in their normal places. Blood spatter removed from the walls.

  There were no vampires sticking spears in my belly or banging my mom.

  “Damn!” I said out loud. The words had no echo, but at least the sound out of my mouth seemed to be returning to normal.

  A huge pile of mail and papers sat on the living room table, so to get myself out of my depressed funk, I sat down and started to arrange them into stacks: stuff to do, insurance and stuff, and trash.

  I heard a knocking at the back door and got up, thinking it would be Mary-Christine.

  When I walked into the kitchen, looking through the glass door stood Mandy Cross.

  I figured Lyman must be getting ready to come home soon. Mary-Christine had been by with her dad and a professional cleaning crew. The blood all sucked up from the carpet, the place turned to rights. No one would have ever guessed what had happened there.

  Of course, nobody would have guessed that a vampire lived in Lyman Bracks’s attic, either. So, when Mary-Christine came up to the second floor - alone - I got my chance to corner her.

  I felt kind of sad the way I found her. Sitting on Lyman’s bed (he has a Star Wars comforter, BTW, people…) and kind of gazing at the geeky décor and talking out loud to herself.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” she said to some poster of the Milky Way.

  “I can tell you what’s going to happen,” I said.

  She must have jumped like ten feet. A classic.

  “Mandy?”

  “Who were expecting? Princess Leia?”

  I’d grabbed the Leia action figure off Lyman’s dresser and made it like it was the one answering her. Mary-Christine actually smiled. The first time I’d seen anything crack her face.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, the little grin dissolving into her typical pout.

  “I told you I’d be around. I’m not the kind of vampire that tells lies.”

  “My father is right downstairs…if he finds you…”

  “First of all, his human ears can’t hear anything over that industrial steam cleaner. Secondly, I’m pretty sure I could take him if it comes down to that.”

  Woo. She did not like that response.

  “If you come anywhere near my family, Mandy, I’ll personally drive the stake through your heart.”

  I cocked my head all belligerently. “If I decide to come after your family - you won’t be around to do anything.”

  Score one for the vampire.

  She totally changed the subject at that point. “So, what’re you planning on doing? You’re just gonna stalk Lyman for the rest of his life like some fatal attraction psycho?”

  “Don’t worry, chick,” I said, sweeping my hand around the pre-pubescent room, “I’m not in to ten-year-olds.”

  “My Lyman’s more of a man than your Alan McCartney ever was.”

  I went at her then. Before Mary-Christine could blink her pristine little eyes, I had her pinned to the mattress, clutching her throat. No Judo way she was getting out of this one.

  “Alan McCartney is not MY man. Don’t you ever put me in the same category as him - ever! Alan McCartney is a fucking disease. And as far as that bastard is concerned, I am the fucking cure.”

  Her face turned the first shade of blue, her eyes bulging. It looked pretty gross. So, I let her go.

  Mary-Christine just lay there for a few minutes, rubbing her neck and gasping for air. There were bruises on her throat - five, small ones like a handprint. Okay, I felt pretty bad about that. Honestly, I’d only meant to shut her up. Not suffocate her.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. The words sounded lame coming out of my mouth. I mean - how do you apologize for nearly strangling somebody?

  When Mary-Christine could answer, she sounded like Kermit the Frog on helium, “I don’t want you here.”

  “You don’t have a choice in the matter, little girl.”

  “Mary-Christine?” her father called up from downstairs, “How’re you doing up there?”

  She looked at me with these fiercely intense kind of manic eyes. “I do have choices, Mandy Cross. All I gotta do is…”

  “Tell your daddy on me? You do, and he’s dead…and so are you.”

  Mary-Christine waited a few seconds too many to answer. I could hear her dad taking the steps by bounds - two at a time, I’d guess.

  “You’ve got a choice to make,” I warned her, heading for the closet, “don’t make the wrong one.”

  I yanked a scarf off a hook and tossed it to her. Mr. Muscat strolled into the room a split second after I got the door shut.

  Man. The stench of two Helsings that close made me want to retch. Big time.

  “Mary-Christine?”

  I heard him lower down onto the bed. He talked to her so sweet, I got instantly filled with longing to see my own dad again. Upset stomach replaced with the worst heartbreak I’d ever felt.

  “Hey - what’s the matter, sweetheart?”

  Her voice still sounded hoarse. I figured that could be explained by crying, which she did a lot of. Hopefully she’d been bright enough to realize the scarf had been meant to hide the bruises.

  “It’s just been…so awful…” she told him, then the familiar sobbing.

  Seriously? What the hell was Mary-Christine so broken up about? She still had her father sitting right there beside her! She still had her boyfriend, alive and apparently on his way home. So, her picnics and roses life had been interrupted for a few weeks? Boo freaking hoo.

  “I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen if…if…”

  Mr. Muscat’s voice got real stern then. All business.

  “If Lyman starts to portray vampire characteristics then he’ll be dealt with accordingly, Mary-Christine. That’s the Helsing way; it’s the right way. You wouldn’t want to endanger countless human lives for the benefit of one person. Hell, he’s not even a person anymore; he’
s a vampire.”

  I wanted to bust through the door and go all Dracula on his ass for that. But, I kept my cool and just let them have their little moment. Besides, I needed to know which side of the fence Mary-Christine really sat on.

  “But this is Lyman we’re talking about,” she choked meekly. “He’s good and honest and nothing would ever change that, Daddy. Nothing! The vampire who changed him wasn’t evil either; Jackson Cole knew he would die but he saved Lyman anyway…”

  The dad cut in again, his tone going from non-emotional to just plain brutal. “That’s what Mandy Cross is selling; doesn’t mean we’re going to buy it. Jackson Cole’s body - or any trace of his disintegrated corpse – didn’t get recovered with the other vampires. He was either removed from the scene…or he got up and walked away. We can’t be sure at this point, but we’ve got a team on it to find out.”

  “How about the debris you vacuumed up?”

  “Accounted for. No Jackson though, trust me.”

  Oh crap. I hadn’t thought of that. Of course the dumbass Helsings would jump to that kind of conclusion: removing Jackson’s body had started some big vampire conspiracy. Jackson Cole didn’t sacrifice himself to save Lyman. No - it had been a ploy to turn a Helsing and then play dead until he could get away scot-free.

  I only had one question for Mr. Muscat. Luckily, Mary-Christine asked it. Good girl.

  “Why? Why would they have done that?”

  Of course, da-da had the answer all ready to go. “These are Amos Blanche’s followers, the most treacherous clan of vampires of the past two centuries. Believe me, if they targeted Lyman as a recruit, they have their reasons and they have a plan for him. Think about it, Mary-Christine - why did Alan McCartney have such a fascination with the boy? Kept him close, made him a friend - and long before Lyman ever knew his calling. If we hadn’t interceded, the Blanche gang may have turned him before he’d ever heard of the Helsings. We cut them to the quick there and I, for one, am going to make damn sure whatever plan they have, it does not succeed.”

  Mary-Christine’s reply sounded weak. Daddy Muscat had gotten to her.

  “But, I love him.”

  “You’ll learn to move on if it comes down to it.” I heard him get up and walk to the door. “We all will.”

  Once I was sure he’d gone all the way downstairs, I opened up the door and propped myself up against Lyman’s desk. It seemed the one thing in the room that looked like it belonged to a grownup; and that’s including his weepy girlfriend.

  At least she’d put the scarf on. Backwards - but whatever.

  “What? You’re going to threaten me again, Mandy?”

  “I don’t have to.” I said, smugly, “By the resigned look on your face, you’ve already made your choice.”

  Reality Closes in

  We faced each other over the kitchen table. I sat three-and-a-half feet away from the vampire who had killed my best friend, but I felt no acrimony, no resentment.

  “You still smell of vinegar,” she said, trying to raise a smile. It didn’t work.

  I sat for a moment, just staring into her dark eyes. “Tell me about Jackson.”

  “Humph.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Jackson Cole was my only real friend. He never wanted to be a vampire, and he willingly went to his death so that you could live.”

  “More.”

  “He played guitar.” Her eyes clouded, and I could tell that she was having a hard time inside. “He treated me with respect, even though Alan treated me like shit. He told me the truth about being a vampire, when Alan tried to sell me a sales pitch. Jackson Cole might be the strongest man I’ve ever met.” She stopped for a second, the tears now falling freely down her face. “You’ve got a lot to live up to, Lyman Bracks.”

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “Pennsylvania. From some big vampire buildup back in the seventies. He got turned against his will, and although the other vampires beat the shit out of him, he refused to take a single human life. His mom and sister, too. Then Alan McCartney beheaded Mona and Steve Cole, Jackson’s foster parents, just to make a point.”

  “Is that why you killed Alan?” I thought I had come to the crux of the matter.

  “Partly.” She leant over the table. Her face now just two feet away. “But it wasn’t the real reason. Alan McCartney was one of the Blanche vampires, turned by Amos Blanche himself. Alan tried to recreate the ‘old-times’- empire-building. Even by vampire standards, he’d gotten out of control. He killed Mona and Steve Cole, and they were vampires. He beheaded my mom and dad in front of my eyes before he turned me; I drank their blood. He turned my best friend, Cami, just to make me jealous.”

  I knew she was a vampire, but right then, at that point, I could have hugged her. So much had been stripped from her unwillingly.

  “Alan had to be stopped. More innocent people were going to die; he would force more girls to do what I did. I knew I had to stop him, but I also knew that I loved him. Loved him just enough that I couldn’t actually ‘kill’ him. So I did the next best thing.”

  I nodded at the genius of her plan. “You killed him in public, so he had to leave.”

  “That’s right. And taking away its leader, the rest of the vampires were much easier to take down. Weren’t they, Lyman?” Mandy chuckled, and the smile lit her face. “Hell, you put a chair leg through Jeff’s heart. I’ll remember that move for-freaking-ever.”

  I looked off to the dining room; looked at the exact spot. “Seems like you and I have a lot in common, Mandy. Our parents taken violently from us, both of us forced to be vampires, both left alone to deal with it.”

  “We’re similar, Lyman, but we’re not the same. I’m left alone. You have Mary-Christine. You still have parents through her.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a vampire because of Jackson.”

  “No!” She pointed a very stabby finger right in my face. “You’re alive because of Jackson Cole!”

  I sat in silence for a moment, then she relaxed a little, sitting back in the chair.

  “You’re alive because Jackson Cole, although he was a vampire, he still believed in good versus evil; your kind being good. So, you know what he thought of my kind - of himself. He believed in you, Lyman Bracks. He believed that you were the servant of God, wiping the globe clean of the vampire menace. He gave his life for you to live. Don’t you dare underestimate what he did.”

  I couldn’t really come up with an adequate response to that. Guess I sat there, not talking for too long. Mandy took a deep breath and kept on going. I watched her dump a suitcase of her feelings out onto the table, fishing through it for the items she wanted me to have.

  “He drove to your house that night because he believed in his mission to help you beat the rest of Alan’s gang. He came here to fight, and if it wasn’t for him, both you and your precious Mary-Christine would have been bodies on a slab.”

  “You fought, too. I remember.”

  “I fought along with Jackson,” she said quite distinctly. “Then I watched him commit a painful suicide so that you could live.”

  I still had a horde of questions, but I didn’t have any energy left to ask them. We sat in silence for a while, then Mandy rose from the table. Never letting her eyes leave mine, she walked around to my side, then came real close.

  “Get well, Lyman Bracks.” I felt her hair brush my cheek, the touch of her breast on my shoulder. “Live up to the legacy that Jackson Cole left you. Jackson Cole never fed on human blood. I don’t expect you to.”

  Her breath swept over my face, and I inhaled. So beautiful. So sexy.

  “And where will you be?” My voice suddenly sounded deeper than before.

  “Oh, I’ll be watching you, Lyman Bracks. I’ll be real close.”

  There was a stirring of air in the room, and she evaporated before my eyes.

  I was left with a boner in my pants; the first one as a vampire.

  I’d been waiting so long for my chance to have that face time with Lyman Brac
ks. As I walked away, I hoped I hadn’t left anything out. But, it wasn’t like there weren’t going to be more conversations to come - even if Lyman didn’t realize it.

  Leaving there, I felt good. I had to hand it to him - Lyman seemed to be taking it all in stride. At least he hadn’t run off screaming when I showed up at his door. And when I talked, he listened - really listened. He wanted to know about Jackson; and not just about the vampire stuff. But about the guy - the musician, the die-hard Christian. All that.

  I started to wonder how much of Jackson had, pardon the term, bled into Lyman. As I walked, all these strange, happy musings started floating around in my head. Like, what if some of Jackson’s personality traits had gotten meshed up with the Helsing’s psyche?

  I mean, okay…like Alan McCartney as a human couldn’t have been THAT nasty of a guy. Maybe when Amos Blanche changed him, part of Alan actually become Amos. Maybe that’s what that “beholden” business Jackson had told me about meant. The bond between a new vampire and the one that changed them; something so strong most new vampires couldn’t resist the will of their changer.

  I’d been through that with Alan. All he had to do was show up, give me the eyes and a whiff of his pheromone, and my will dissolved - putty in his evil little hands. After all the shit he pulled, though, I felt that bond had been forever broken. Alan had no hold on me anymore. I even started to question why I thought him so hot, so charming in the first place. He’d played the horn the GD marching band for goodness sake!

  Now - Jackson had been better than me in that situation. He never got sucked into that mess with Amos Blanche. He’d been a man of faith before getting changed; and that faith made him stronger than someone like me. Jackson was a freaking vampire hero.

  Maybe, just maybe, Lyman Bracks would be that way, too. Never take a human life. Never be the stereotypical bad-guy vamp. Just thinking about it made me feel peaceful. And proud. And a tad ashamed of myself that I wasn’t stronger.