Fate of the Vampire

by Gayla Twist

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, hugging back, feeling a guilt so heavy that it was literally weighing down on my chest. “I really wish I knew what happened.”

  “Maybe you’ll be able to remember something after you get some rest,” she suggested.

  “I hope so,” I said as she released me and I headed for the stairs. “I really hope so.” If I was being honest, what I really wanted to do was forget.

  Before I met Jessie, I didn’t know about love, but the world wasn’t that scary of a place. Sure I had to watch out for random perverts and had to keep an eye on a friend if she passed out at a party, but I had never been truly terrified. Since meeting him, I had been constantly pursued by the undead, who were determined to end my life in the most painful ways imaginable. For how good and loving and loyal Jessie was, a lot of other vampires were seriously demented. They didn’t care about mortals. They didn’t think of us as equals. Jessie had told me that many times when a mortal is turned into a vampire it changes who they are. They become twisted and distorted to the point that who they are as the undead doesn’t even resemble who they were when alive.

  I shed my clothes, just letting them fall on the floor. I’d bag them up and throw them out in the morning. I was too tired to even take a shower. I started to put on my pajamas but then just sagged on the bed cradling my head in my hands. I didn’t know how to fix my life. I didn’t know how to love Jessie and yet stay safe from the undead world. How could I still keep Jessie in my life and yet live vampire free?

  I saw the pendant Grandma Gibson had given me for Christmas sitting on my bedside table. I had to give her credit; she’d almost been right again. And someday she would be right. If things kept going the way they were going, someday a vampire would kill me. I took off my Pools of Light and then snagged the pendant, fastening it around my neck. I knew Jessie would be over soon, but he would just have to deal with me wearing a little silver. After the day I’d just had, I didn’t think he’d begrudge me that.

  Gingerly, I pulled on my pajama bottoms and then painfully shimmied into the top. I knew my shoulders were nothing compared to Fred’s, but there was definitely still some discomfort. I couldn’t imagine what he must have gone through fighting the vampire while in excruciating pain. Still, he was alive. They were all alive, so that was good. It was just poor Mervin who was probably dead. At least that death couldn’t really be laid at my feet. Jessie’s grandfather would have come to Tiburon no matter what. And he was always going to eat with an appetite that showed no mercy. The town was lucky that Fred and Liz and Don were still alive. I was lucky to be alive.

  I inched my robe up over my shoulders. I wondered how late Jessie would be. I assumed he had to report in to the Bishops about his grandfather. There would probably be another investigation. That would not be good. I was pretty positive that the Bishops would not look positively upon a repeat offender. Jessie had developed a bad habit of prioritizing my life over that of fellow vampires. On the other hand, Mr. Vanderlind was acting pretty out of control. Vampires weren’t allowed to just snatch people off the streets anymore. Not if they didn’t want to get locked in a coffin for a few centuries. I sighed, feeling completely drained. I really didn’t know what was going to happen.

  I was tired. And I was miserable. I wanted to just lie down and shut my eyes. I had some pain pills from the hospital. The ones they had given me before I’d left had worn off. I really wanted to take a few more and then just sleep. I wished Jessie could simply tell me when the hell he was going to show up.

  And then a delightful thought occurred to me. He could just tell me. We were living in modern times, and Jessie’s girlfriend had just rather thoughtfully given him a smartphone. My plan was briefly interrupted as I thought about my cell phone tucked safely inside my bag somewhere in the bowels of the Tiburon sewer system, but then I remembered that I could just as easily use our land line to call his cell.

  We had two phones for our land line. One was in the kitchen, and the other was on a small table in the upstairs hallway. Mom used to have it in her room until I became a teenager. Then she figured that I would probably want more access. That was kind of her, but she was thinking with a brain that was reliant on old technology. She wasn’t thinking that modern teens were usually always within hands reach of a phone.

  I peeked out into the hallway. I could hear my mom watching television downstairs. I hurried down the hall, snatched up the cordless phone from its cradle, and then dashed back into my room. I pushed the buttons for Jessie’s number. I could never remember the formula for a quadratic equation to save my life, but I had memorized the seven digits to Jessie’s cell phone almost instantly.

  I wandered around my bedroom, waiting as the phone rang. But it didn’t surprise me when he didn’t pick up. I listened to his honeyed voice asking me personally to leave a message.

  “Hi, Jessie, it’s me,” I started, suddenly feeling embarrassed for no good reason. Just then, there was a tapping at my window. I peeked out through the curtain to see Jessie with his long coat swirling about him, striding away from the glass to the edge of the roof. I continued my message by saying, “Okay, I was going to ask you when you thought you were going to drop by, but you’re here now, so never mind.” Then I quickly added, “I love you,” which was kind of silly seeing that I was just about to be in his arms.

  I hung up the phone, tossing it onto my bed. Throwing back the curtains and opening the window, I called out to him in a quiet voice, “Jessie.” He was sitting on the edge of the roof with his legs dangling over the side, looking out at the night. “Are you coming in?” I asked softly.

  He looked down at his hands and shook his head.

  “Okay, I’m coming out,” I told him. “I just need to bundle up a little.”

  Shutting the window so all of the warm air didn’t escape from the house, I looked around for something to wear. I didn’t know why Jessie wanted to sit on the roof, but I didn’t see any reason why I should have to freeze in the process of him explaining. Was the loss of his grandfather bothering him? Or maybe he knew that another vampire death would bring more trouble from the Bishops. In a weird way, I didn’t want to know. The last several hours had been so stressful that I didn’t feel I could handle any additional bad news. Still, I was eager to be with him, even if it was on our porch roof in late December.

  I pulled a pair of sweatpants over my pajama bottoms. I already had on some thick socks, but also stuck my feet into my sheep’s wool slippers. I grabbed a sweater and wrapped it around my neck like a scarf. That would have to do until I could lure Jessie back into the house. My shoulders were in no mood for me to try to pull anything over my head.

  I expected Jessie to get up when I opened the window again, as I was hooking one leg over the sill. He rustled a little, glancing over his shoulder in my direction, but made no move to assist me or come any closer. Great, I thought. Is he going to try to break up with me again? I had to admit I was freaked about staking another vampire and about the undead lifestyle in general, but I never for one minute doubted wanting to be with Jessie Vanderlind. I knew with every fiber of my being that he was the love of my life.

  “Jessie,” I said as I came up next to him on the roof. “Are you okay?”

  He turned his head away.

  “Jessie,” I said again, reaching out to put my hand on his shoulder. “I know things are bad right now, but as long as we’re together, then I’m sure everything will be all right.”

  He sprang to his feet, crushing me in his arms, his eyes two burning embers. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he hissed. “Nothing is going to be right ever again. Not for you and not for my dear brother.”

  I realized after it was too late that it wasn’t Jessie sitting on my porch roof. It was his brother, Daniel. The roof fell away from my feet as he launched us into the air, one of my slippers tumbling to the ground.

  Chapter 35

  I started to scream, but then Daniel slapped me hard across the mouth. “Scream
again and I’ll rip your pretty face off,” he warned.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, fighting down the hysteria I felt building inside of me.

  “I’m doing what I always do,” he informed me. “Cleaning up after my brother. Protecting the family name.”

  “How is kidnapping me protecting your family name?” I wanted to know.

  “When you have an infestation of termites, you poison them,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “When a mortal manages to sink her claws deep into your brother’s heart, what do you think you do?”

  I stared at him, opened mouthed. Everything suddenly made sense. The creature in the woods that always filled my dreams wasn’t Jessie. It was Daniel. “You killed Colette,” I finally managed to say.

  “Of course, I killed her,” he said, not even trying to deny it. “Wasn’t that obvious? I couldn’t believe that Jessie never suspected me. You’d think I’d be the first person he’d accuse.”

  “But why?” I asked, trying not to draw attention to myself as I kicked off my other slipper. It was freezing out, especially up high in the air, but I wanted Jessie to have some idea the direction we were headed.

  “Didn’t I just explain myself to you with the termites?” he snapped. “I didn’t want a damn mortal in the family. It’s so humiliating. Most vampires would just take a girl as a companion. But not Jessie. He has to go and offer to conjoin with the wretched creature. Have you ever heard of anything so absurd?”

  I assumed his question was rhetorical, so I didn’t answer him. I was too busy scrambling around inside my brain trying to think of what else of mine I could drop to give Jessie a scent trail.

  “I thought telling the Bishops about Viktor would have been enough, but no. They ruled in your favor. They even awarded you the honor of being turned into a creature of the night, but you somehow managed to avoid it.”

  I tried to distract Daniel while I rubbed one foot against my other leg, trying to scrape off my sock. “So you’re the one that betrayed us to the Bishops. You’re the one that pushed for the inquisition.” I gave him a disdainful look. “You tattled?”

  “I was trying to get rid of you in an honorable way,” he informed me.

  “By tattling,” I repeated.

  His temper began to rise. “I did not tattle. I …” He paused and looked down as my left sock fell to the earth. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” I insisted.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he informed me. “We’re almost there.”

  “Where?” I asked, trying to crane my neck around. We were flying above a bunch of trees.

  “I thought it might be nice for continuity’s sake to suck you dry at the same place that I killed Colette. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  Daniel had definitely lost it if he thought anything about what he’d just described sounded like fun. “Doesn’t it bother you to murder people?” I fired back at him.

  “Not in the least,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever start to feel guilty, but I keep eating, and so far I never have.”

  “So you …” I tried to process what he’d just told me. “So you’ve killed more people than Colette? Aren’t you worried about people coming after you? Your family? Your mom?”

  Daniel laughed. A high-pitched, delighted laugh of a small boy who believes he has gotten away with something. “There is so much more to the vampire world than you will ever know.”

  We started landing. I saw the tops of trees appearing before me. I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to think. I had no weapon. We were entering a small clearing in the woods, so I could try to grab a tree branch or something. But given the lightning-fast speed of a vampire, that would involve me having a very good head start or quite a bit of luck. I had to stall Daniel as long as I could and just pray that Jessie figured out what had happened to me.

  “How many people have you killed?” I asked, hoping he was in a mood to brag about his misdeeds before ending my life.

  Daniel gave me a look of disdain. “I haven’t kept a list.”

  As he set my feet on the ground, a thought occurred to me. “Did you kill Mervin?”

  “That old taxi driver?” he asked. “No. That was Grandfather. He was used to killing with impunity.” Daniel released me in a very nonchalant way, confident that he could knock me to the ground before I could even run two steps. “If I don’t go to the hunting fields, I like to be more subtle when choosing my meal.”

  “The hunting fields?” I asked, trying to appear casual as I reached under the sweater I had wrapped around my neck to grasp the silver pendant that used to belong to Colette Gibson.

  “A place I’d love to take you,” he said with an evil smile, his gray eyes glittering with malice. “It would be fun to prolong this little encounter, but I’m afraid dear brother would come charging to the rescue and do his best to ruin everything.”

  “So you’re doing this just to be spiteful to your brother?” I asked, filling my voice with incredulity.

  “You might say that,” he said, grabbing me by the arm and jerking me forward so that we were looking eye to eye. “I very much enjoyed killing you once. Imagine my surprise when you showed up again. This time, it’ll be even better. I do so relish watching Jessie’s heart break. He takes such pleasure in his own grief.”

  I knew what I had to do. I had to yank on the pendant so hard that the clasp would break. Then I would slam the silver into Daniel’s eye.

  The vampire screamed in pain, releasing me to rid himself of the metal that was sizzling into his skin. Allowing me the few seconds I needed to turn and run.

  It felt like I was running through water. My legs were pumping and my arms clawing at the air, but I wasn’t moving very fast. Not in comparison to the speed of a vampire.

  “Oh, good,” I heard Daniel call. He must have already rid himself of the silver. “I love it when they run.”

  I knew it was winter; I knew there was snow on the ground; but I didn’t see any snow; I didn’t feel any cold, at least not the cold of late December. Things were missing. I knew I had dropped something, but I couldn’t think of what. Something I was carrying? I told myself it didn’t matter. I had to keep running. I had to try to elude Daniel until Jessie could find me. I had to try to hide from the beast.

  The moon hung high in the sky, shimmering and pale like a drop of water beading on a window pane. I hadn’t realized it was a full moon. I’d lost a shoe somewhere as I ran, so I limped along with just one. My lungs were burning as I gasped for breath. My hat was gone, and so was my luggage.

  Where was Jessie? Where was my love? My foot caught on a tree root and I fell, barely able to keep a shriek from escaping my lips. My ankle throbbed and I couldn’t catch my breath, so I crawled over to where a tree had fallen to shield my body.

  My brain felt fuzzy. It was all real. It was all very real. But also like a dream. Like a memory I desperately wanted to forget. My neck burned, and I wondered if I’d scratched it against the branch of a tree as I ran.

  A chill began to creep through my body. I tried to wrap my dress around my legs but found I couldn’t move my hands. I thought about Mama and Papa. I wished I’d never left them. I wished I was still cozy and warm in my bed with Lily breathing softly in the bed next to me. I wished I could tell Jessie goodbye.

  I was having trouble focusing. The burning in my neck had spread down my right arm, and I was beginning to feel it in my chest, shooting down my spine.

  I wasn’t lying on the ground. I was upright, and snow blew around my ankles. I couldn’t move. I was locked in an iron grip. I had Colette’s silver pendant in my hand. I could still kind of see it out of the corner of my eye, but Daniel was clenching my wrist.

  I hadn’t been fast enough. Daniel had sensed my feeble plan to escape. The beast had sunk his teeth into my flesh. He was draining me. The silver pendant slipped through my hand and dropped to the ground.

  Every vein in my body throbbed with each gulp Da
niel took from the punctures he had made in my neck. I had been so stupid. I would love Jessie to my last breath, but I had been so very stupid. My whole body was on fire. I knew without a doubt that I wouldn’t last much longer. I was going to die.

  Chapter 36

  I heard a sound like a flag flapping in a strong wind. Daniel must have heard it too because he looked up from his feast, my blood dripping down his chin.

  “Jessie,” he said, immediately releasing me and letting me slump to the ground. “You’re too late again, I’m afraid. Your little mortal is almost dead.”

  Just knowing Jessie was there made my failing heart pump a little stronger. I could just make him out from where I lay. He was staring at his brother with a look of complete horror. A word formed on his lips. “Why?”

  “Why?” Daniel exclaimed as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Why?” he repeated. “I did it for the honor of vampires everywhere. I did it to save the family name. I did it for what is right and true and honorable.”

  “You’re insane,” Jessie told him.

  Daniel laughed. “I might very well be. But it’s the right kind of madness. The noble kind of insanity.”

  Then Jessie came at Daniel so quickly I couldn’t even see it, there was just a blur. He sent his brother flying through the air and smashing into a tree. He crashed to the ground but was instantly on his feet again. “Is that all you’ve got?” Daniel wanted to know. “I killed the love of your life twice, and all you can do is give me a little shove?”

  “At least I know what it is to love,” Jessie said before lunging at his brother again.

  Daniel had been concealing a branch behind his back. He must have somehow grabbed it when he fell. He tried to stab Jessie with it, but thankfully Jessie managed to twist his body out of the way just in time. Daniel was off balance after his lunge, and he staggered a little, giving Jessie the opportunity he needed to kick the branch out of Daniel’s hands.