by Amy Cross
Keller moves towards her, but she fires at him again. And again. And finally, after a fourth shot, he falls to the ground.
14
Pain is the body’s way of telling you that there is danger. But when you no longer care about danger, you learn to experience pain in a completely different way. Subjected to enough pain, you start to gain strength from the incredible rush of adrenaline that surges through your body. Your enemies never realise this. They think they can kill you by causing you more and more pain. In reality, every strike against you is another boost to your adrenaline. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. For me, at least. While my mind is as clear and strong as ever, my body has gone completely insane.
The bullets rip into my flesh, cutting blood vessels and bouncing off bone. Somewhere at the depths of the sensation, I can feel the pain. Or perhaps ‘feel’ is not the right word. I don’t ‘feel’ the pain, I simply become aware of it as it rises through my body. There was a time when I was as weak as any human, when I would have screamed out as my body warned me to avoid the source of the agony. But I have total control over my body these days. I defeated it, I overcame its natural instincts. I am the mind, and I control all. Pain is just another form of strength.
I wait. I need just a moment to recover my strength. There are still some parts of my body that are human. These are the weaknesses with which I must live, at least for now. Soon they will be gone, and the subjugation of the body will be complete. For now, I have to grant these human chunks of flesh time to recover from the injury. I am imperfect, though soon I shall overcome these imperfections. It doesn’t matter, anyway: these pathetic humans will not escape.
Anyway, if the kill became too easy, I would become bored. This is an entertaining diversion while I wait for the real pleasure, which will come when I rip the head from Vincent’s body and set out to find the body of the vampire Patrick. That’s when I will feel the pleasure I have been delaying for decades.
Already, my body is healing. It was like this when I fought Patrick. It took every ounce of my strength to kill him, but I did manage to smash the life from his body in the end. Now I just need the body, to pick apart. The body of a vampire is a miracle, and I am close to possessing the last example of this miracle. I possessed it once already, briefly, but I was tricked into losing it. That will not happen again.
My strength is rising again. It is time to destroy the pathetic, weak humans. First these two, then all the rest. There will be no room for humans when my new generation of vampires control the planet.
15
Shelley slowly lowers the gun. She’s clearly in that phase where your body’s sheer adrenalin is forcing you to stay strong even when your mind is telling you to crumple to the floor. Trying to keep her eyes fixed on Keller, she glances at me for a moment. “You can explain all this later, okay?” she says, her voice trembling. “Just tell me one thing. Did I kill him?”
I look at Keller. He’s clearly still alive, shuddering on the floor, absorbing the pain. His eyes are screwed tight shut. “No,” I say. “He’s not dead. We should get out of here”.
I head for the door, but Keller rushes past me and pushes Shelley out of the way, turning to face us. He’s bleeding from his shoulder and his chest, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing him down much. He looks so much more dangerous now, with those gaping wounds from the bullets - plus the knife wounds in his chest - clearly doing nothing to weaken him.
“Two humans?” he asks, gasping for breath. “Even more pathetic than one human”. He’s grimacing, clearly in pain. For two pathetic humans, we’ve certainly caused him some real pain, and this must be annoying him. Still, he’s far from finished off. And he’s blocking the door, so we can’t get out of the house. I’m starting to realise that this maybe isn’t the kind of confrontation you can resolve with plans and ideas, it’s the kind of confrontation you can only resolve with brute force. Unfortunately, both Shelley and I are sorely lacking in that department.
Keller stands up straight. It’s as if it took him less than a minute to recover from the bullet wounds. The injuries have stopped bleeding and he seems to be in no more pain than before. In fact, he’s even smiling.
“When I’ve killed you,” he says calmly. “I’m going to rip out your eyes and drop these bullets into your empty eye sockets”.
Shelley grabs me and pulls me out through a door at the back of the room, leading me into a bare room that leads around to the hallway. With Keller still near the door, we have no choice but to run up the stairs and into one of the rooms, turning to try to blockade the door with furniture. There’s not much choice, so we drag a bed across. It won’t hold Keller back for long - in fact, it won’t really hold him at all - but it might buy us a moment or two.
I turn to Shelley. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” she says. “But when my best friend turns up at my window in the middle of the night asking for a gun, I tend to worry. I followed you, didn’t I?” We both hear the sound of Keller coming up the stairs. “Kind of wish I hadn’t now,” she adds. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I say, running over to the window and trying to get it open, though it seems to be nailed shut. “I thought you said you’d lost that gun?”.
“Let’s just say I owe someone a favour,” Shelley says, coming to help. “A really nasty favour, so in some ways it’d be a blessing not to get out of here alive”.
“How many bullets have you got left?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says, “used them all back there”.
With the window clearly jammed shut, I turn as I hear Keller’s footsteps outside the door. Well, that little escape didn’t last long. But instead of coming in, he seems to pause, and then I hear him walking slowly along the upstairs corridor and into the next room. It’s kind of menacing, knowing that he’s got some kind of plan. And I don’t think we can talk ourselves out of this one.
“Who is that guy?” Shelley asks. She’s heard him too, and we’re both staring at the wall, knowing that he’s on the other side, plotting something.
“He thinks he’s a vampire,” I say, looking around for some furniture we can use to smash the window. “He’s an idiot who got some plastic surgery, but he’s dangerous”.
“Why does he think he’s a vampire?” Shelley asks.
“He’s very...” I search for the right word. “Impressionable”.
“And this place?” Shelley asks, looking around the room.
“Vampires,” I say.
“Vampires?” Shelley asks. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Vampires,” I say again.
“Where are the vampires?” she replies.
“They were here,” I say. “But they’re dead now. Well, he’s dead. There was only one”.
Shelley nods. I can see that she doesn’t really understand. “You can explain it to me some other time,” she says.
“I’m not sure there’s going to be another time,” I say.
Shelley looks around the room again, and then back at me. “Then I’d better tell you something,” she says.
“You’ve got a bazooka in your pocket?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. It’s... I -”
We both turn as there’s a huge crunching sound and part of the wall is smashed down. Through a cloud of dust and plaster, Keller charges into the room.
I grab Shelley’s arm and we run out, but there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to go. I turn and look back and for a moment it’s almost as if everything is in slow motion as Keller launches himself at us, a look of absolute hatred across his face. For the first time, I see him as not being human at all: instead, he’s like a kind of animal, not a vampire but close; a creature full of rage and anger. And just as he’s about to land straight on me, something dark emerges from over my shoulder and collides with Keller, knocking him back into the room.
Somehow, I instantly know what is happening.
Sure enough, as Keller fights back to t
ry to get off the floor, he has someone on top of him, forcing him down with all the strength in the world. Straining with every sinew in his body, fighting with his last energy, it’s Patrick.
16
Through the pain, I see a face. The face of the vampire. At first, I consider the possibility that I have lost my mind, that he is just a figment of my imagination thrown up to taunt me. But as he rips and tears at my flesh, I realise that he is all too real, all too dangerous.
When I first killed vampires, many years ago, I found it so hard. But over time, it became easy. I could kill a vampire in just a few minutes. Then I came up against this vampire, who has now become the last vampire, and I have never quite managed to finish him off. Twice, I've thought he was dead. But both times, he managed to find a way to survive. How can he have defeated me twice? How can he have tricked me? What is his secret? Sometimes I feel as if he's not just a vampire; I feel as if he's something else entirely.
Still, everything will be okay. I know how to kill him this time.
17
Shelley tries to pull me down the stairs, but I fight to stay. Patrick and Keller are locked in a fight of such power and anger that I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything so shocking. Patrick is on top of Keller, literally ripping chunks of flesh away from his enemy's body, while Keller starts to roar as he reaches up, grabs Patrick's head and starts to squeeze. I can see Patrick grimace with pain as the pressure builds, as Keller's huge muscles start to ripple. With Shelley still pulling on my arm, I stand my ground, determined to watch. Whatever happens, whoever wins this titanic struggle, I have to see it with my own eyes. It's the only way I can believe anything anymore. Even if I die in the process.
"Get away!" shouts a voice from behind. I turn to see Vincent has entered the house. "Get away!" he shouts again, "they're out of control".
I glance back at Patrick, to see that he has slipped his head from Keller's grasp for a moment and is still ripping - with his hands, with his teeth - at the larger man's body. As I watch, Keller roars again and this time throws Patrick across the corridor. The whole house shakes with the impact.
"You said he was dead!" I shout, turning to Vincent. "You said you hid his body!"
"I had to lie!" Vincent shouts back. "The only way to make Keller believe Patrick was dead was to make sure you believed it. There was no other way, I had to protect Patrick".
I run to Vincent and push him against the wall. I don't think I've ever felt so angry at anyone, about anything. "You lied!" I shout. "You made me think he was gone forever!"
"He needed time to heal," says Vincent. "I'm sorry".
For a moment, I'm filled with a desire to hurt him, to cause him the kind of pain that he caused me. I couldn't admit it at the time, not to myself, but the thought of Patrick's death had filled me with the most gigantic, gaping black hole of despair. Hell, I'd even been prepared to come down here, to be killed by Keller, simply so that... what? It was like a kind of suicide.
But as I look at Vincent, I see him for what he is: an old man trying to protect his son. And I remember that he's dying, and I'm overcome with sorrow for him.
"Fucking hell," says Shelley.
I turn and see what she's looking at. Keller has Patrick's head in his hands again, and is pressing with all his strength. Patrick, apparently powerless to resist, is squeezing his eyes together in agony. I swear to God, it looks as if his head's going to burst any second.
So I do the only thing I can do.
I run up the stairs, straight at them, and I push Keller with all the strength in my body. It's not much. It barely even jolts him. But it's enough. Just enough. It gives Patrick a fraction of a second to twist loose. I slam into a wall and fall back to the floor, looking up in time to see Patrick turn to Keller.
I expect Patrick to kill Keller there and then.
I expect him to finish the fight.
Instead, he leans in to Keller, opens his mouth wide, and bites him on the neck.
Keller's eyes open wide and he stands there, accepting the bite.
After a few minutes of this bizarre scene, during which Keller seems completely unable to struggle, Patrick lets go. Slowly, Keller feels the two marks on his neck where Patrick's teeth entered his body.
"Why?" Keller asks. "Why now?"
"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Vincent says. "To become a vampire?"
Keller nods. He's clearly in shock, as if his greatest enemy has suddenly turned around and given him the gift he always wanted. "Why have you done this?" he asks Patrick.
"Can you feel it?" Vincent asks. "Coursing through your body. You're turning into a vampire from the inside out, your blood is mutating. You're getting stronger, more powerful than you've ever known. And you've been waiting for this for years, haven't you?"
Keller nods. He can barely move. He looks over at me and for a moment his eyes seem to have turned yellow, and when he opens his mouth I see the two syringes fall out. They've been replaced by two new teeth, perfect fangs that have risen to take their place.
"I feel it," he says. "The flood. The essence of... I am no longer human". He holds his hands up to look at them. "I feel the most immense strength, I feel... I feel eternity ahead of me. Eternal life. Darkness and light". He turns to Patrick. "Thank you," he says. "I can never repay you for this".
Patrick stares at him. At first, I can't make out the expression on Patrick's face. It seems to be a cross between shock and pity. Nothing makes sense: why did he give Keller the one thing that Keller should never have had? Why did he reward Keller by allowing him to become a vampire?
And then I understand the look on Patrick's face.
Rage.
Boiling throughout his body, rage is consuming Patrick. I've never seen him like this before. I've always known that he's powerful and strong, very powerful and strong. But I've never really seen this rage overflow in him like this before. And as I watch, he steps towards Keller and then launches himself at him, knocking him to the ground and ripping a huge chunk of flesh from his chest. Keller reaches up to try to stop him, but by this point Patrick has pulled apart Keller's entire torso and has started to pull his spine apart. I have to look away, even though I see that Shelley is staring open-mouthed at the whole thing.
Eventually I look back and see Patrick, covered in blood, standing where Keller used to be. All around are pools of blood, and lumps of flesh and bone. Patrick has literally ripped Keller apart with his bare hands.
"What..." says Shelley. "What... what..."
"Patrick needed rage," says Vincent. "There's only one thing Patrick hates enough to summon up that kind of power". He turns to me. "Other vampires".
"Why does he hate other vampires so much?" asks Shelley, but no-one answers.
I understand now. Patrick needed all his anger in the fight against Keller. But the only way to summon that anger was if he was fighting something he hated more than anything. He needed to be fighting a real vampire, so he turned Keller into a vampire. And Keller got what he wanted, for just a moment, before his death, before Patrick was finally able to summon up the rage he needed to finish the job.
"How can one person rip another one apart like that?" I ask.
"He must hate other vampires a lot," says Shelley. She turns to me, with a shocked look on her face. "Like, a lot".
"Why?" I ask, turning to Vincent. "He's a vampire himself," I say. "Why does he hate other vampires so much?"
Vincent shakes his head. "I can't explain it," he says. "You'll have to find out for yourself one day. And you will. Trust me, you'll understand. You'll even feel that rage yourself, or something similar".
"Sounds creepy," says Shelley.
I turn to her. I suddenly realise that Shelley now knows everything. I turn to Vincent. "This is my friend," I say. "I'm sorry, she followed me here, she..." I look at Shelley. "She saved my life, I think," I say.
Vincent smiles. "Then we shouldn't be too hard on her," he says.
"What is this place?" Shelle
y asks, looking at me. "How do you know all this? Wait..." She pauses, thinking. "Vampires?"
"It's a long story," I say. "I'll tell you later". And I will. I'll tell her how I met Patrick, I'll tell her all about the werewolves and the Tenderling creature, and about everything that's happened. But there's still a problem. I turn to Vincent. "Are you still -"
He nods. "Let me handle this," he says.
I glance at Patrick. "Does he know?" I ask Vincent.
Vincent takes a deep breath. "Not yet," he says. "I must speak to him alone. This will not be easy".
"How long do you have?" I ask.
"Hours," says Vincent. "No more than that".
"You said Patrick was dead," I say. "Why should I believe you now?"
Vincent steps towards me. "I had to let you think Patrick was dead," he says. "But I would give anything in the world to be able to tell you that I'm going to live. I'm just a human, like you. This day was always going to come".
I look up at Patrick. Still covered in Keller's blood, he stares at us. It's as if he knows that something is wrong, but at the same time it's clear from his eyes that he's still filled with the rage that he used to kill Keller. In fact, I don't dare go anywhere near him, because he seems to be... not himself. As I look at his rage-filled eyes, I'm not sure if he'll ever be the same again.
18
January 15th, 1925.
"Martin!"
I ignore it. It's just one more distraction. I really need to get a lock for the basement door.
"Martin!"
There's no point answering. I move around the table, checking for anything that might be out of place. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of gears and switches and systems are laid out before me. It's so complicated, so intricate, and so perfect.
