Child of Twilight

by Margaret L. Carter

  Roger shot a dismayed look at him. “I won’t be an accessory to murder.”

  Claude flashed him a smile before resuming a steady gaze out the windshield at the light-speckled freeway. A clear night had displaced the snow clouds of the past few days. “Compose yourself, mon frere. I haven’t taken leave of my senses completely. Revenge is a waste of effort, and the man isn’t worth the inconvenience of killing. But he does owe me.”

  “I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

  Claude shifted in the passenger seat, projecting a restlessness that affected Roger like a gnat buzzing in his ear. After drumming his fingers on the armrest for a minute, Claude took cigarettes and lighter out of the breast pocket of his windbreaker. In reply to Roger’s disapproving glance, he rolled down the window. “Sorry, I need this.”

  Claude used that vice to mute the demands of unsatisfied hunger. Roger couldn’t fathom how he could stand to smoke at all. “I thought Eloise would have taken care of that. She refused you?” He rolled down his own window. The cross-draft made the cigarette smoke barely tolerable.

  “Not at all.” Claude emitted a humorless laugh. “She offered—in a teeth-gritting, close your eyes and think of England manner. I turned her down. I’d rather starve than be treated as an unpleasant obligation.”

  Though a vampire couldn’t starve, he must be feeling that way with the void generated by his rapid healing unfilled. The shadow of that need turned Roger cold inside. He couldn’t imagine that kind of rejection from Britt, another ordeal that would give substance to the cliché, a fate worse than death. “That explains your behavior with those female fans.”

  “Oh, you noticed?” said Claude. “When they make themselves so blatantly available, it’s hard to resist playing with them, even though I’ve absolutely no intention of following through.” He blew smoke rings out the window to be shredded by the wind.

  “That’s no way to advance a reconciliation with Eloise.” A psychiatrist shouldn’t give advice, but this was his brother, not a patient.

  “Dash it all, I can’t help it—habits of a lifetime, and all that. My self-control isn’t up to par this weekend.”

  “I can’t believe you get much satisfaction from that—flirting.” In accordance with the directions Britt had wormed out of Greer, Roger exited the freeway onto a wooded county road.

  “Not much.” Claude exhaled a gust of smoke. “The difference between starving in the wilderness and eating grass, I suppose.”

  Despite their errand, Roger welcomed the dark, deserted highway, peaceful after the crowded hotel, its atmosphere dense with noise, smoke, alcohol, and sweat. He was tempted to rest his eyes by turning off the headlights, which handicapped his superhuman night vision. He left them on, though, for fear of a collision with a driver who lacked his advantages.

  When the car slowed to a crawl on the winding gravel road that led into the resort described by Greer, Roger did extinguish the lights. The less attention they attracted the better. Claude threw away his cigarette stub and perked up, his nostrils flared as though he could scent their quarry from this impossible distance.

  Within less than five minutes, Roger parked the car a few hundred yards from the clearing where Greer’s cabin ought to be. Careful to walk on loam rather than gravel, Roger and Claude crept soundlessly toward the house. Claude sniffed the wind. “A vehicle was driven through here a very short time ago,” he whispered too low for anyone but Roger to hear.

  Roger nodded agreement. He, too, smelled fresh engine fumes ahead of them. When they stepped into the clearing, he saw the professor’s van parked to one side of the wide, gravel-surfaced driveway. The cabin door stood open. A body lay face up near the van.

  Claude trotted over to the supine form and knelt to examine it. Right behind him, Roger recognized the professor. No other living presence rewarded his mental probe. “He’s alive,” said Roger. To confirm the diagnosis Greer let out a groan as Claude’s hands clutched his shoulders.

  “He’s been hit on the jaw,” said Claude, “but he’s coming around well enough.” He shook the half-conscious man. “Wake up, damn you!”

  The professor’s eyes opened. At the sight of Claude’s eyes glowing crimson in the night, he moaned again and closed his. Claude ripped open his collar button to reveal a small wound. “Losing a bit more won’t hurt him.”

  “Unwise,” Roger said. “He’ll make you sick.”

  “I won’t allow that to happen. I’ll take it easy, and his being half out of it helps.” He shoved the professor’s head back to further expose the throat.

  Roger didn’t care to watch. Though he felt that the cabin was deserted, he went inside to search. Gillian’s metallic scent lingered. She must have been there until only a few minutes ago. In the bathroom, where her scent clung most heavily, he found material evidence—handcuffs. They were unlocked, not broken. A growl rumbled in his chest. Maybe I should encourage Claude to kill the bastard, after all.

  In the living room, he found a Polaroid camera. Alarmed by the implications, he ransacked the two rooms until he unearthed a pile of instant photos of Gillian. He held onto them for destruction at the earliest opportunity.

  Outside, Claude crouched over his quiescent prey. Roger noticed Claude swallowing repeatedly, as if fighting nausea. No random victim, even one too shell-shocked to emit discordant mental static, could nourish him comfortably while he remained fixated on Eloise. He glanced up at Roger. “He’s been drinking too much.”

  “I tried to warn you.”

  Claude shuddered, pressing his lips together. In control now, he impaled Greer with his gleaming eyes. “Wake up. You’re going to answer a few questions.”

  The professor’s glazed eyes stared up at Claude.

  “Very good. Where is Gillian?”

  “Don’t know. She gone?” The words came out slurred.

  Claude tried a different tack. “Who hit you?”

  “Camille.”

  Roger stiffened. Claude prompted in the same smoothly compelling voice, “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Thought she liked me. Told me how to catch the girl. Kissed me—wild.” His voice remained flat, but his aura momentarily flared a deeper red.

  “Yes, and then?”

  “Scratched her neck. Made me lick the blood. Then we got out of the car, and she knocked me down.” His eyes rolled. “Where’s rental car? She take it? Bitch.” He spoke the word as dully as if reciting from a script.

  “So. Interesting.” Greer’s head slumped to one side. Grasping his hair, Claude pulled his head up to make him look forward. “Listen carefully. Forget I was here. You arrived with Camille. After she hit you, you fell unconscious. That is all you remember.” Greer attempted a sluggish nod. “Good. Now go to sleep.” He let the man’s head drop to the ground.

  “She exchanged blood with him,” Roger said. “Normally she’d have found that extremely—distasteful.”

  Claude stood up, brushing at the damp spots on his trousers. “Yes. So she must expect to have some future use for him. One reason I made sure to obliterate his memory of me.”

  “Camille took Gillian. Obviously she planned the whole thing and used him to get at the child.”

  “Logical conclusion.” Claude started for the car.

  “You’re planning to leave him this way?”

  Claude turned to give Roger a puzzled look. “Why not? I said I wouldn’t kill him, but I don’t have any incentive to pamper him.”

  “With the blood loss in this weather, you’d be condemning him to hypothermia.” Though he loathed the man too, Roger’s conscience wouldn’t allow him to kill outside the heat of battle. “That’s tantamount to murder.”

  Claude shrugged. “Do what you like with him.”

  Roger hauled Greer inside, dumped him on the couch, and shut the door.

  As he started the car, Roger said to Claude, “Feel better now?”

  Claude overlooked the caustic tone. “As a matter of fact, yes. Marginally.”

 
A little later, Roger said, “What do you think Camille plans to do with Gillian?”

  “Not kill her, certainly, or she would have done so at once. Nor do I think Camille would risk a death sentence that way.” Destroying one of their own kind constituted the ultimate crime.

  “What would you do in her place?”

  Claude stretched, his long legs trying for a comfortable position in the medium-size sedan. “I’d never have absconded with the girl to begin with.”

  “Did she go willingly, I wonder?”

  “You didn’t see any signs of a struggle, did you?” Roger admitted the fact. “However willing or unwilling she may have been,” said Claude, “I don’t give her long before she’ll be under Camille’s wing one hundred percent. Remember, she’s at the most impressionable age.”

  “If Camille presents herself as Gillian’s rescuer—” From what he recalled of Camille’s late brother, Roger shuddered to think of what Gillian might learn from the woman.

  Claude seconded his thoughts with an emphatic nod. “Vampire version of the Stockholm syndrome.”

  “I WISH YOU had let me kill him.” Gillian gazed sideways at the pale, dark-haired woman who propelled the compact car along the twisting lanes as if the campground were a race course.

  “I might need him again in the near future. Besides, didn’t they teach you not to leave bodies lying around that can be traced to you?”

  “Yes, but what he did—”

  “For the present, losing his treasure—you—is a fitting punishment.” The woman began to sing, the draft from the open window whipping her unbound hair:

  “Oh, what are we going to do with Uncle Albert?

  A bloomin’ stallion

  Is Uncle Albert!

  When he goes out strolling in the park,

  Watch your step, girls, especially after dark—”

  She broke off, glancing at Gillian. “What are you thinking, with that earnest, wide-eyed stare?”

  “Who are you? Did Roger send you?”

  The woman quizzically arched her brows. “My name is Camille. Of course Roger didn’t send me. Why would you think so?”

  Now Gillian grasped the meaning of the human idiom her heart sank. No doubt Roger had been glad to get rid of her. “I thought he might feel some—obligation.” The woman’s name suggested something to her, but she was too agitated right now to scour her memory for the reference.

  “Because he let you live with him? He might have acted like a human father, but you couldn’t expect the pose to hold firm under pressure.” They’d left the resort area, and Camille was now driving the stolen car at about seventy along the traffic-free county highway.

  “I didn’t live with him.” Gillian felt a flicker of something like surprise from Camille. “I ran away from Lord Volnar, and I’d been with Roger only two nights. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected him to feel responsible for me.”

  “I see.” Gillian couldn’t read Camille’s reaction. The vampire woman had firmed her psychic shield, which etiquette didn’t allow anyone, especially a child, to challenge.

  “How did you find me? And why?”

  “Why should be clear enough. I couldn’t allow a man like Greer to hold one of our young captive, could I? As for how, I followed your sire to a convention and became acquainted with Greer. I’d noticed his interest in Roger and wanted to question him about it. As you’ll find out, tasting a human male’s blood makes him highly suggestible. He spilled the whole story of the exotic beast he’d captured. So here I am.”

  Exotic beast! Gillian’s anger at Greer flamed afresh. There was nothing she could safely do to him, though; Camille spoke wisely on that point. “Thank you. I’m most grateful. Where are we going?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes!” Camille could have read Gillian’s unshielded desire but instead chose the courtesy of asking, a bit of consideration that made Gillian feel gratifyingly adult.

  “Then after we’ve found a place to stay, we’ll find you a meal.” Another brief but probing look. “You don’t take human prey yet, do you?” To Gillian’s silent negative, she said, “Soon, though. I sense you’re growing into it.”

  A ripple of excitement stirred beneath Gillian’s fatigue and hunger. Soon! She stretched, then curled sideways in the bucket seat, luxuriating in the freedom of movement she’d lacked for so many hours. Along the highway the wooded landscape was now varied by gas stations, convenience stores, the occasional cluster of houses. A few minutes later Camille slowed for a motel sign with Vacancy illuminated in red. When the car turned into the parking lot, Gillian saw a one-story semicircle of units with a door at one end of the arc labeled Office. A window next to that door showed a desk clerk in the rectangle of light. Except for the green doors to the guest rooms the building was white, its paint streaked and peeling. Mounds of grimy snow dotted the partially cleared lot, occupied by a panel truck and four cars.

  “The management should be glad to see us,” Camille remarked. “Wait here.”

  Through the windshield, Gillian watched her rescuer enter the office and negotiate with a stout, gray-haired woman. Red and blue lights blinked on a scrubby Christmas tree beside the counter. Camille, Gillian noticed, handed over cash, not a credit card.

  Returning to the car with a key in hand, Camille said, “Neither the comfort of a Holiday Inn nor the quirky charm of the Bates Motel, but it’ll do until we have time to find something better.” She drove to the other end of the lot.

  “Bates Motel?”

  “You’ve led a sheltered life, haven’t you?” said Camille, pulling into a parking slot and killing the engine. “Haven’t you been allowed to watch horror movies yet?”

  Gillian shook her head.

  “Sheltered. You’re mature enough to handle the exposure, I’d think.”

  Mature. Gillian basked in the word’s implications.

  Inside, Camille sat cross-legged on the double bed, leaving Gillian the one chair, fake leather, with stuffing poking out of the cushion seams. The smell of chlorine bleach from the bath permeated the room. Camille didn’t bother to turn on a light. “Volnar was your advisor? Why did you run away from him?”

  “I didn’t feel prepared to bond with him.” Gillian narrated her experience at the play, the flood of emotions that had overwhelmed her. “Everyone says I can’t learn the full range of adult skills without a blood-bond. I don’t want to accept that.”

  “Nor should you,” Camille said. She combed out her windblown hair with splayed fingers. “I don’t in the least blame you for being reluctant to bond with Volnar. I wouldn’t care to place myself under his dominance, either.” She frowned in thought for a few seconds. “Gillian, I have an idea. Why not let me teach you—it would be my pleasure. And I give you my word, I’d never think of forcing a blood-bond on you. Your mind would remain entirely your own.”

  An unrecognized tension that had been squeezing Gillian’s ribcage loosened. “Would you? I know I do need a mentor—but not him.”

  Camille’s eyes gleamed red in the darkness, relieved only by a pale glimmer from the far end of the parking lot. “Excellent decision. I won’t force any act upon you against your will, and I won’t restrain your growth. Sometimes, the elders are a little too cautious, don’t you think so?” She sinuously unfolded herself from the bed and went into the bathroom for a glass of water. “Now, shall we hunt?” She refilled the glass and offered it to Gillian.

  The water had a strong mineral flavor. She didn’t mind; every area’s water tasted different, but not necessarily unpleasant. The trace of salt titillated her blood-thirst. “I’m ready.”

  When they left the motel room, the light in the office had been turned off. “Good, she won’t notice our driving away later,” said Camille as they walked around to the back of the complex. “I need a meal too, and animal blood won’t be enough.”

  “Didn’t you have the professor?” Gillian said. Like Camille, she automatically spoke in a near-whisper. “I thought I n
oticed the mark in his aura.”

  “Very good observation. But I also expended energy in subduing him. At any rate, why should we deny ourselves full and frequent satisfaction? Too many of our kind drag themselves around half-famished, out of exaggerated caution.”

  They picked their way across a trash-strewn back lot into the sparse woods behind the motel. Intermittent traffic sounds drifted to them from two directions. “Lord Volnar says two or three times per week should be sufficient.”

  Camille cast an amused glance at her. “He’s conservative. As Prime Elder, that’s his job. The rest of us can recognize that in this society, we can feed as often as we choose without arousing suspicion. Nobody believes in us.”

  Gillian’s nostrils flared, catching the spoor of squirrels, skunks, and raccoons. “What about Greer?”

  “How did he come to suspect you?”

  Still abashed by the memory, Gillian told her as briefly as possible.

  “Witnessing a transformation is a far cry from something as indefinite as a mysterious attack of anemia.” Camille gestured for silence. To ambush their prey they needed quiet.

  With Camille in the lead, they backtracked along the trail of a raccoon, which they found perched in the fork of a tree. Like Roger, Camille hung back to allow Gillian to lure the creature down. She ensnared its glittering eyes, reveling in its obedience to her call. The snarl in the animal’s throat died as it inched down the tree. By the time Gillian gathered her victim into her arms, its heart and hers were beating in perfect synchronicity. Unlike Roger Camille claimed a token sip before letting Gillian drain the raccoon.

  “Now for the main course,” said Camille as they returned to the motel. “I’ll let you help me with the hunt. That will be good practice.”

  Gillian tingled with pleasure. Though Volnar had often let her watch the preliminaries, he had never enlisted her aid. Of course, then she’d had none of the necessary skills. Now, so short a time later, she did. “Where are we going?”

  “Washington.” After a stop at the room to pick up the car keys, they were on the road again.