Human Revolt 02 - Vampire LA

by Phil Tucker

  “And … you don’t care? About the people? The War? The deaths, the atrocities that are going to happen?”

  He looked at her with a melancholy so profound that she became intensely aware of how much older he was than her, how much he had already seen—and grown inured to. “No. I don’t.” He shook his head slowly. “I know I should. But I don’t. Nor, in time, will you.”

  Selah slammed her fist on the desk. Its leg shattered it as its surface caved in and it collapsed to the carpet. All this strength, and she couldn’t do a thing. Selah pressed her fingers against her temple. Think, she heard Mama B say. There’s something you’re missing, girl. Think.

  Selah closed her eyes and sank down to the floor. Pushed the world away and pressed her chin hard against her knees, dug her thumbs into her temple. There had to be a way out. A way to escape this fate. It came to her, and she stiffened. No. Not that. With deliberate effort, she forced herself to think of what was coming. Remembered lying with Cloud in bed, dreaming of the future, the rebellion they were going to lead, the good they were going to do. The vaccine, and all it promised. She couldn’t give up. Not even if it meant asking for the impossible.

  Selah opened her eyes, and looked at the floor before Theo’s feet. “Do you love me?”

  Silence. Finally, she sensed his nod. “Then … we don’t both have to die.”

  She felt the weight of his gaze upon her like a judgment, a blanket of lead. The last thing she wanted to do was look up, but deep down a part of her that yet believed in dignity forced her to raise her face and meet his eyes. His own burned with a strange light, as if they reflected a fire, but the heat that she saw there was completely internal.

  “You wish for my heart.”

  She nodded. “There is no other way. My blood holds the key to defeating the vampires. I can’t let that chance go. I can’t give up.”

  Theo’s expression wasn’t outraged, nor shocked. It was a delicate, gentle thing, almost frail, and it took all of Selah’s strength to not look away. Never had somebody looked at her in such a manner, with such a potent mixture of love and desolating sadness.

  “It’s always been yours. Ever since I met you. From that first moment in that back room in Miami. Do you remember? You were so scared, but so defiant. I lost my heart that night. You’ve had it all along.”

  Selah felt tears burn in her eyes, and wiped them furiously away. “Theo.” Words failed her. She felt the urge to apologize, to argue with him, but instead she rose to her feet and stepped toward him. Drawn by his eyes, by his love, compelled by the torrent of her own emotions.

  Theo stepped forward and encircled her with his arms. Selah tilted her head back and pressed her lips against his own, his cold, full lips that devoured her hungrily. She felt a darkness swirl up from her core, a rushing of great winds through her ears, felt herself falling into the void, the both of them tumbling into the night. There was nothing but his powerful arms around her, pulling her close, and for a single, mad moment, she thought of an unlife by his side, of the possibility of convincing him to flee with her, and share this mad love forever.

  Theo broke the kiss. With gentle firmness he pushed her back, and in doing so awoke her from the fitful dream of an eternity that never could be. Selah stumbled back, and pressed her fingers to her lips. Watched, horrified, as he opened his shirt and pulled it off, so that the light of the fitful dawn sky shone on his bare chest, his beautiful ebon skin. He held up his hands, and she saw that his nails had grown sharp, into talons.

  “I love you, Selah Brown. I love you for who you were two hundred years ago. For what you have been to me these past two centuries, and for who you are today. My wife, my dream, my destiny.”

  Selah couldn’t breathe. He smiled, and his love made his face human for the very first time. “Live long, Selah. Live a beautiful life. Bring to others a measure of the grace that you have brought me.”

  Selah shook her head, tears flooding her eyes once more. He looked up at the ceiling, and with a sudden and vicious movement buried his claws in his chest. He dug through the muscle and thick blood oozed forth, ran down in great clotted rivulets over his skin. His face contorted into a mask of fierce concentration and agony, and with a jerky, convulsive movement, he forced his hand past his ribs, snapping one of them in the process, and clasped his own heart.

  His scream sundered Selah’s mind, so that the strength left her legs and she fell to a crouch. He stood swaying, hand buried in his chest, and then with every ounce of remaining strength tore free his heart. There was no spray of blood. No splattering of gore. Thick ichor dripped to the ground from the heart’s torn aorta, from the other massive arteries. He held it in the palm of his hand, and staggered toward her. Knelt, and held out his heart.

  “Take it.” His voice was a rasp. “Take it before I lose control of myself.”

  Selah looked up at that. His voice was perilously cold. She reached out, hand shaking, and took his heart. It was cold and oily to the touch, tough and compact and surprisingly heavy. He sat down, then lay back with a long, whistling sigh. Selah rose to her feet and stood over him. He looked at her, and his eyes were as cold as the glittering of stars.

  “Eat my heart, Selah. Hurry. My love for you fades.”

  Selah rubbed her face again. “Fades? You’re dying?”

  He shook his head. “Only my spirit. My body will live on. Without my heart, it will feel nothing. Hurry. Eat my heart, and flee. I will come after you. I will hunt you. I will seek to eat your own heart in turn.”

  Horrified, Selah staggered back. The wound over his chest was closing over. It was a great pulpy mass, but grew leathery scar tissue even as she watched. Theo closed his eyes. She looked at his heart. Glanced out the window. The sun had nearly risen. She let out a moan of pain, of despair, and bit deep. It was tough, chewier than she’d thought possible, and had it not been for her vampiric incisors, she would’ve been unable to tear it at all.

  With each bite, she felt warmth spreading through her. With each chunk that she swallowed, she felt her sense of self returning. The more she ate, the harder it was to continue, the stronger the rancid taste. Her teeth, she realized, were shrinking. Her lust for blood, especially this cold, congealed mass in her hands, was dying. The final bites were agony. She felt her gorge rising each time she tore a piece off, and at the last stood leaning against the table, trying not to vomit. But she finished it all. The sight of Theo on the ground, the sacrifice he had made, forced her to do so.

  Selah wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She felt her heart hammering in her chest as it had not done so in days. Her mind was spinning, reeling, and she couldn’t tear her eyes off Theo. Had it worked? She thought it had. She was breathing rapidly, almost panting, and she felt weak. Feebly, feeling ridiculous, she turned and punched the wall. Her wrist buckled, and pain lanced up her forearm. She immediately tucked her hand into the other armpit. She hadn’t left a mark on the wall.

  Sawiskera’s curse had been broken.

  A sound behind her caused her to whip around. Theo had risen to his feet. He moved slowly, laboriously, and she saw that his skin had turned gray. His brow seemed heavier, his mouth a mean, jagged gash across his face, and his eyes were black but without any light of intelligence or indication of the vampire he had been. He devoured her with his gaze, and lurched forward.

  Selah let out a cry of fear and jumped behind the desk. Theo swept it aside and sent it crashing into the wall. There was nothing within him to appeal to. No spark, no spirit, no soul. It was like gazing upon a beast. She stepped back, once, twice, and hit the large window. Morning air tainted with smoke breezed in, and she cut her hand on the broken glass as she fought to steady herself. Turning back, she saw Theo take a step forward and then the morning sun broke free for but a moment of the clouds and its faint, tenuous light flooded through the window and over Theo’s body.

  He let out a hissing screech and threw his arms before his face. His skin blistered, and he staggered back. Selah fought t
o hold back her sobs. To see him brought to this. Theo thundered out a roar when he reached the shadow at the back of the room, and tried to look at her through his fingers but the sun shone over her shoulder still and scorched his eyes. He ducked once more, half turning away. Selah watched him, hands over her mouth. It was too much. He tore open the office door and fled into the darkness.

  Exhausted and horrified, Selah sank to the ground. She was human. She was going to live. She tried to wipe Theo’s blood from her lips, and succeeded only in smearing it further across her chin. She looked at her hands. Her clothing. It was stiff with the blood of vampires. Her hair was clotted with gore. Selah covered her face and began to sob, soul-wracking cries of relief and terror and pain.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  When she was able to gather herself, Selah found a small, private bathroom and did her best to wash her face. She washed with scalding hot water and a bar of soap, but there seemed to be no end to the amount of crimson that came off her skin. Finally, she stopped and stared at the box shower. She felt dull, strangely lifeless now that she was human once more. The desire to feel water across her naked body was as sudden as it was undeniable. She stripped off her clothing, peeling it away from her skin, and dropped it into a heavy, tacky heap on the tiles. Stepped into the shower, and felt a pang of panic at the thought of the shower not working.

  It did, though, and blasted down upon her with stinging needles of white-hot glory. She raised her face to it, and let it course down her body. She didn’t care if the Culebras came back. Didn’t care if Theo himself found his way to her. In that moment, perfection was stinging hot water, the feel of dried blood slicking off her, the sense of her newfound humanity rising up to meet the coming day in a state of cleanliness.

  Selah reached for the soap. The past week had been so dark, so unutterably hard that she felt the need to scrub the blood not only off her skin but off her spirit. The blood that lay thick on her hands for the murders she had committed. With the Sawiskera’s curse gone, she could no longer regard those deaths with indifference. She stared sightlessly through the shower tiles and saw the faces of those she had killed. The first dealer when they had crossed the wall. Colonel Caldwell. The soldiers. The many vampires. Padrino Machado. She had killed and killed and killed again, and only now did those murders come home to her, to weigh her down like a necklace of stones.

  She scrubbed until her skin was raw, and then soaked her hair, running her fingers through it as best she could. It was knotted, and clumps came free under her insistent touch. It was such a heinous mess that she gave up halfway through. Instead, she pushed open the shower door, and examined the sink. Stepped out of the shower, dripping water everywhere, and opened first one drawer, then the next, then the final one. There. A powerful hair clipper.

  Head bent over the sink, she buzzed all of her hair off. She felt her breath coming in deep pants, from the depths of her diaphragm, from the depths of her soul. With each clump of nappy, knotted, blood-clotted hair that fell, she felt herself lighten. Over and over again, she ran the clipper across her scalp, until there was nothing but a light fuzz over the planes of her skull. Selah set the clipper down, and looked at herself in the mirror for the first time.

  Her eyes were her own once more, or at least, they were human again. Yet they were a stranger’s eyes, her expression hollow and distant. Her face was her own, but shorn of her hair her features seemed naked, larger, more vulnerable. She ran a hand carefully over her scalp, and nodded. It felt right. It felt good. She was less than she had ever been, and somehow, infinitely more. Turning, she stepped away from the mirror, and back into the shower.

  Perhaps half an hour later, she searched the office. Whoever had worked here had kept a spare set of clothing in the closet, so she pulled on the jeans and white button-up shirt. They fit, if loosely, but there was no belt. Selah took a power cord from a phone charger, tore off the black plug, threaded the wire through the belt loops, and cinched it tight.

  That’s when she saw the Omni where it had fallen from the desk. It was a small, minimalist version, but it turned on readily enough. A pair of Goggles lay next to it, but she didn’t want to fully immerse herself. She didn’t want to get close to anything.

  The first thing she did was log into her account and check her Garden. She only wanted to see if Mama B had responded. And she had. Her message was there, glowing and waiting to be opened, but Selah chose not to. She couldn’t handle Mama’s grief. Instead, she opened a new recording, a full video feed, and looked right into the Omni’s lens.

  “Mama, it’s Selah. I’m cured. I’m human again—whatever that means. You’ve heard the news. The vampires have broken out of LA. I bet the Treaty is officially over. The War’s started up again. I’m going to turn myself over to the military. They’re looking for Arachne. No matter what they say, they can’t do anything if I’m clearly human. They’ll listen. They’ll realize I’m Selah Brown.”

  She paused. Took a breath. “Tell General Adams I’m going into military custody. They have to believe my blood can be used to make a vaccine. Now more than ever.”

  Another pause. She looked out the window. The morning clouds were thick and tinged heavy crimson and salmon pinks, the smoke making it a lurid light show. Beyond the banks of smoke she could see the first few snatches of light blue. A part of her, small and quiet, gloried at the sight of it.

  “I love you, Mama. This fight isn’t over yet. I aim to get the military to listen to me, and let me help. I hope to be in touch again soon. I’m going to call the military and give them my location. I bet they’ll be coming for me real fast, but who knows. Maybe they’ve got their hands full with these Blood Thralls.

  “The important thing, Mama, is that I love you. I love you so much, it hurts. I’m alive, I’m back, and I plan to fight this War with everything I’ve got. I promised someone—someone important—that I would make the rest of my life count. I plan to do just that.”

  Selah looked at the lens, and felt a wave of determination roll through her. “This War may be just starting, but I’m going to do everything I can to end it. I love you, Mama, and don’t worry about me. After what I’ve been through, I know I can handle what’s coming.”

  Selah stopped the recording and sent it. Opened up a line to the nearest military base, then looked out the window one more time. There was more blue in the sky. She’d call the military in a second, and set off that chain of events. But for now. For just this one moment, she’d simply take in the sight of the dawn she never thought she’d see again.

  And it was glorious.

  ###

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  The Human Revolt: Vampire Infection is due to be published in March 2013. If you want a quick note letting you know when it's available, ask to be notified by emailing me at pwtucker@gmail.com.

  About the Author

  My name is Phil Tucker and my dream is to one day be a full time author. Why do I write? Because it's my first and truest passion. My mind formulates endless stories, and when you catch me daydreaming, I'm probably brainstorming my next novel. Nothing gives me the same thrill, and my greatest hope is that one day I'll be sufficiently adept at my craft so as to provide readers with the same magic that inspired and delighted me as a child.

  Keep in touch! You can reach me at pwtucker@gmail.com

  Twitter handle is @pwtucker

  Blog is www.transientme.com

  Facebook page is here.

  Goodreads page is here.

 

 

 
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