The intruder straightened, pulling the boy onto his feet by the rope. He hefted the boy under his arm like a football and moved with preternatural speed to the woman. She barely had time to register the movement before the intruder was straddling her, sitting on her lap with his knees pointing behind her, and they were facing each other. He was much too heavy for her and she screamed out in pain. The intruder dropped the boy next to him and lifted the woman’s chin in order to look into her eyes.
The man looked slowly down at the boy. The woman’s tear-filled, horror stricken eyes followed his gaze to her son. She tried to scream out, but the man’s powerful grip was squeezing her jaw and she couldn’t move her mouth.
The man looked back at her, and Sarah’s eyes focused back on him. He smiled weakly with mock sympathy. The woman panted frantically.
“I’m going to keep him,” the man said. “It makes me happy to look at him so I think I’m going to keep him as a pet. I’m going to give him the gift.”
The woman grew angry now. She didn’t know what the gift was, but she didn’t want it for her son, nor did he deserve it. He was only a child, she begged silently still unable to speak with the intruder’s rough hand on her jaw. Please let my son live. She struggled against the intruder on her lap with a fierceness that gave the man pause. She had almost managed to throw him off. Spittle flew from her lips as she struggled to say, “Over my dead body!”
The man was amused. He clasped his hands together, holding them up like a champion. The woman pounded her head into his torso with a fury unmatched by any of his previous victims. She was a fighter. It was a fruitless attempt, but she would fight anyway.
“That’s exactly how it will be,” the stranger said. “Over your dead body.” He then bit into her neck and drained her. She struggled valiantly at first, but her struggles soon weakened, and then ended altogether as she gave her final breath.
He sat back when he was finished. He had not wasted a drop of her blood. He turned his attention back to the boy. It was his turn. The man had saved the best for last. He smiled.
Although the boy was facing the very real possibility of the end of his short life, he couldn’t stop looking at his mother. Her head hung limply to the side. Her milky white, dead eyes were open and looking at him--looking through him. The boy was in such a state of shock that when the man began speaking, the boy barely understood the words.
Pointing behind him at the carnage in the room, the man said, “I don’t want them to come back so I’m going to destroy them. I’m going to cut off their heads and then burn the house down around them.
“But you I will not destroy. I’m going to keep you. I will drain you and you will die, but then you will return. We will roam the night looking for fresh blood, you and me. We will live together forever, or until I grow bored of you. Would you like that?”
The boy showed no reaction to the words. He was still looking at his mother. He was concentrating on her face, not wanting to forget what she looked like.
He gave the boy a loving smile exposing his fangs and, with a large rough hand, he caressed the boy’s cheek. A bloody thumb left a smear of crimson on the boy’s face. Closing his eyes, the man leaned over and bit into the tender flesh of the boy’s neck.
8.
Maggie sat up in the queen-sized bed, gasping. She was having trouble catching her breath after such a terrible vision. She felt as though she had been the woman who was killed. Both David and Antony, who had been sitting at the dining table going over their plan to locate and eliminate the dark vampire, turned in her direction. Though she had only been sleeping for about two hours, she joined them at the table.
“He’s close,” she said. “He has killed another family. Only this time he has a…a hostage.”
“A hostage?” David asked, not sure if he heard her correctly.
“Well, not really a hostage. His exact words were ‘a pet’. He had drained this small boy and allowed him to return. He has a rope tied around the boy’s neck like a leash.”
Antony closed his eyes and calmed that inner voice screaming out at this injustice. “The boy will have to be euthanized,” he said calmly. “By the time this beast is stopped, the boy will have gone mad and will be extremely dangerous.”
Maggie, saddened by this news but unclear how else to proceed, said nothing.
Antony saw the anguish in Maggie’s eyes, so he continued. “Please understand, even if he were not insane, he would not have the strength or the ability to hunt. Child vampires do not have the same abilities and advantages an adult vampire has, and his canines would not grow in for another year or so.
“Vampire canines do not just magically appear, nor can they be summoned at will. They grow in after the change—sometimes within six months, but typically it takes up to a year. Until then, vampires use razors or needles. Biting through flesh with flat teeth just makes a mess.” Antony noted that Maggie was nodding her head as if she had made up her mind about something.
“I’m going to save that boy,” she announced.
Antony looked at Maggie curiously, wondering if she had heard anything he had just said. She clarified.
“I understand that the boy will be dangerous, but until we know that he is beyond hope I want to try and save him. Promise me you won’t destroy him unless there is no other choice,” she said firmly.
“He may not survive the encounter, anyway,” David said. “When we go after the vampire, we may not survive the encounter.”
“Promise me,” she said again, and this time she was talking to both of them.
They promised.
Antony said, “Do you know when he attacked this latest family? And can you pinpoint where?”
“It just happened,” she said. She pulled a map out of a drawer and circled the vicinity where the attack occurred.
Antony studied the circle she had drawn on the map. It was quite a big area. “Can you narrow it down more?’ he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Just follow the fire trucks.”
9.
The house was gutted by the time they arrived. It was nothing more than a charred shell with blackened, windowless panes still dripping with moisture from the fire hoses. Small tendrils of smoke reached up to the night sky where the charred remains still held just that little bit of heat. The trio moved closer to the wrecked building. All the bodies had been removed from the premises, and the rescue vehicles were mostly gone. Only a few onlookers remained in the vicinity, with only one or two police officers still finishing up their investigation. If anyone noticed the Zephyr’s approach, no one showed any curiosity toward it.
Antony looked at Maggie as she stared intently at the house, hoping she could get some kind of reading on the vampire. Her grim visage told him all she could pull from the horror that occurred there were the echoes left behind by the sorrowful dead family. She sagged against David, exhausted from the emotional toll of the images the house hammered at her. David held her up. She turned to him and hugged him, burrowing her head into his neck. She began to cry. “I can’t do it.” She groaned, defeated. “I can’t stay here. It’s too much. We have to go.”
After a minute her sobbing subsided, and David led her back to the Zephyr parked at the curb. She lay down on the bed and rested. David drove the Zephyr back to their campsite as Maggie rested. Apparently, there was nothing more they could learn at the house.
With the Zephyr parked for the night, David and Antony sat at the table and talked. David said, “What should we do if we can’t locate the vampire?”
“We cannot give up. He is bound to make a mistake sooner or later and when he does, we will be there to stop him.”
“How many people have to die before we finally catch him?” David had not expected an answer, and he didn’t get one.
Toward the end of the night, just as Antony was about to retire to his steel box under the table, Maggie woke and joined them in the small kitchen of the mobile home. She seemed rested and strong, and ready to fight.
“I can’t track him,” she said. “Maybe because of his age or maybe because he feels no emotion; I don’t know. But…” She paused and smiled a little. “I can track the boy.”
10.
Jake Shields was a lonely kid, and school was not easy on him. He was fourteen and pimple-faced. He was tall and skinny—lanky, his grandfather called him—and he wore glasses. Kids at school picked on him, and called him names with merciless intensity. They called him the usual names such as four-eyes and queer, but there were crueler names as well. Once, in English class he had written a paper where the words “does not” had been separated improperly to read “doe snot.” The teacher corrected this in red ink. Another student saw this correction and started calling him Doe Snot. The name stuck.
But probably the one name that bothered him the most was Bird Boy. The other boys chose this name for him because of his long thin nose, and because a boy in the gym locker room commented that his flat white chest and stomach looked just like a bird’s. Suddenly the name Bird Boy had replaced Doe Snot. Kids in the hallway would see him coming and squawk. “Bird Boy is coming!” He loathed the name, not because of this negative attention, but because it was a slight on his personal imperfections. These were physical traits about which he was very self-conscious. He wanted to be strong and physically fit, but just hadn’t been blessed with those specific traits.
But as Jake stood in his room looking at himself in the full length mirror, none of that mattered. Jake did have one trait that made him proud. Although his hair was always greasy no matter how much he washed it, and his pimply face was always oozing, he at least knew how to dress. His clothes were always pressed and wrinkle-free. He tucked his shirt in, and admired his flawless gig line. A gig line was the invisible line the clothes made when the tie, shirt buttons and fly all lined up perfectly. Though he may have been ugly, he was a snappy dresser.
Jake also kept his room as clean and orderly as his wardrobe. This pleased his mother.
And although no school kids called him friend, to say Jake had no friends was not entirely true. He had no friends at school, but once he sat in his computer chair and turned on the computer, he had many friends. In fact, he had three hundred and forty-six to be exact. Jake was the guild master of a very popular and productive guild in a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, also known as an MMORPG. And tonight he and his online friends were about to lead a raid on the enemy stronghold. Jake was now a level 85 undead hunter named Toade. Toade and his pet tarantula named Leggs, as well as 25 others, were about to go after the enemy faction’s king. As Jake donned his headset in order to talk with the other players via a Ventrilo server, he decided it was going to be an excellent night. What Jake didn’t know was that he was about to have visitors, and before he could make it through the enemy’s castle, he and his family would be dead.
11.
He woke to darkness. And hunger. The hunger burned like hot ash in his guts, but it didn’t seem to stop there. The heat seemed to rip through his veins. He could smell the food he needed to quench this all-consuming, fiery hunger somewhere in the air, but it was far away. It was out there somewhere waiting for him. The food he craved with such ferocity smelled like coppery soup. The rich, thick broth called to him like a dinner bell ringing inside his head.
Something stirred beside him and he realized for the first time that he was not alone in the darkness. There was movement and a latch was thrown. Momentarily, another latch was thrown, and then a creaking of old hinges as the lid above him rose. It was at this point the boy understood he was inside a coffin, and the light that flooded over him felt like hot lava burning his eyes. He squirmed away from it.
“It’s only lamplight and cannot hurt you, boy.” The voice was close to his ear and unfamiliar to him.
After realizing he was not harmed by the light, the boy climbed out of the coffin. He still craved the source of that enchanting scent but he was also confused by the unfamiliar surroundings. He looked around the room, and spotted the door a few yards away. Beyond the door he saw stairs leading up, perhaps to safety. He rushed for the door, and managed to come within a few inches of the steps beyond the threshold, but then was tugged back. He landed in a sprawling heap at the feet of the one who had shared the coffin with him. The man laughed at him. Confused and embarrassed, the boy reached up and touched the rope around his neck.
The rope was tight but there was no feeling of strangulation. The stranger had given him the gift, and now he no longer needed air. The rope was there merely to keep him from wandering off. The other end of the rope was attached to the stranger’s waist. The man looked down at him with a smile that had no humor in it. As the boy turned away, to escape the ill feelings the smile invoked, the smile twisted into a snarl. “You will call me Dark Father.” The stranger looked at his creation with pride and happiness. He smiled but the smile faded quickly, turning first into a scowl and then a frown. “I have rules and you must obey them without fault or I will destroy you.
“Rule number one is: don’t talk back. If you talk back when I give an order, I’ll destroy you.
“Rule number two is: don’t look directly at me. Look away whenever speaking to me. If I catch you looking at me, I’ll destroy you.
“Rule number three: speak only to me. If I catch you speaking to our victims—or any strangers for that matter—I’ll destroy you.”
The vampire boy averted his eyes from the Dark Father. “I’m hungry.”
The Dark Father ignored the complaint and continued. “This last is not so much a rule as information you need to know so I don’t destroy you. I have an aversion to dots. They irk me and make me dizzy. Do not draw dots or make dot-like patterns of any kind. To do so would cause your death. Do you understand these rules?”
When the vampire boy nodded the Dark Father dragged him up to the main floor of the house.
The boy looked around at the cathedral ceilings and the lavish artwork hanging from the walls. This was no ordinary house; it was a mansion, but it was a mansion in terrible disrepair. The ancient wallpaper was peeling, revealing the plaster underneath, and in many places large chunks of plaster had crumbled away completely, leaving black cavities where anything could be lurking, watching, waiting.
The boy wasn’t afraid, though. He remembered that in this new world he was the monster. There was nothing left for him to fear; even in this dark and dingy place where shadows lurked like living things and sounds echoed like lost souls calling out their woeful songs. The boy tried to get used to his new surroundings, but every time he tried to examine the furniture or the ornate paintings on the walls, the Dark Father pulled him by his rope to somewhere else.
Father spoke to him, but the boy barely understood the words. He did understand that this strange man had promised the hunger would go away. The boy grew excited by the prospect of finally getting to feed. He was being dragged by his rope through the streets at a speed that caused the scenery around them to blur into light and dark streaks, and there was sound; a harsh crackling sound like rocks being struck together repeatedly. When Father stopped, he would sniff the air. If something didn’t please him he would move on. They stopped at several houses before the man smelled something that pleased him enough to entered house. He showed no fear of capture as he dragged the boy into the house behind him.
The boy looked around the living room. It was a nice, ordinary room. It reminded the boy of the house he had once lived in, but that was before the Dark Father had entered his life. There were two large fluffy brown recliners and a matching sofa. The walls were covered with large framed pictures of family members. One wall had a red brick fireplace built into it. On the mantle were trophies for bowling, hockey, baseball and other sports. On the other side of the room was an opening that led to another room. In that room there was a stairway leading up. From down the stairway a young girl approached. She stopped and stared at the boy standing directly in front of her. She stared at the thick rope around his neck wi
th a confused expression on her face. She would have thought it was one of Jake’s friends, but Jake didn’t have any friends. It wasn’t until she glanced over at the strange man in the beat up trench coat that she finally understood she was in danger. She let out a short, frightened little gasp.
Cindy? The boy thought briefly, but then the rope around his neck pulled him nearly off his feet, as the man took flight after the escaping girl that might have been Cindy but wasn’t.
He tried to tell himself he didn’t know anyone named Cindy. That name held no meaning for him anymore.
The boy felt himself gliding across the smooth, perfectly polished hardwood floor. The strange man had cornered the girl in the brightly lit, clean kitchen. He stood over the girl as she cowered, and her opportunity to escape was lost. The boy wanted to say, Run Cindy, run! But by the time she could get her frightened legs to move, it was already too late. The strange man had reached out and pulled the girl into him. He ripped out her throat and drank the blood as it gushed out of her. The boy no longer thought of the girl as Cindy. Now she was food.
“No!” The Dark Father pulled the dying girl out of the boy’s reach. Blood splashed across the floor from her wound like cheap table wine. “She is not for you. You must wait until I allow you to feed.”
The sound of movement upstairs drew the man’s attention away from the girl. He drained her, dropped her to the floor and began to climb the stairs. The boy obediently followed. The upstairs landing was carpeted. The boy liked the feel of the plush carpeting under his bare feet. He looked down and saw with some distaste that he was leaving red smears on the carpet. He was tracking Cindy’s blood through the house.
Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) Page 9
