The II AM Trilogy Collection

by Christopher Buecheler

  And now Abraham grinned, his eyes greedy, burning with anticipation. “Oh, my. How exciting it all is! Yes, Theroen, she may leave. You will stay. This will be wonderful indeed.”

  Theroen turned to Two. “Go.”

  Two found she could speak again. “No, Theroen. I won’t.”

  “You will. Take Samantha, and go, and do not look back.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Go!” he snarled. Two flinched backward, then looked at him again, frightened, confused, unsure. Theroen, with a visible effort, brought himself back in control. “Please, my love. Do not make me force you.”

  His eyes held her for a moment longer, and then Two saw the anger swallow him again, and he turned back to Abraham. She took Sam’s hand, turned to her left, and ran, tugging the younger girl along.

  * * *

  They made it perhaps two hundred yards through the damp woods before Two was stopped by a low growling. She skidded in the mud, nearly falling, and came to a halt. Eyes glittered from the darkness before her.

  “Whatthefuckisthat?” Sam asked in a breathless rush.

  “That’s Tori. She’s the other vampire. She knows me … but I think she knows what happened to her sister, too.”

  Tori moved closer, into a patch of moonlight, and Two saw that her face was drawn and pinched in rage. She snarled, and charged them, howling. Two did the only thing she could think of. She held out her hands, still tacky with Melissa’s blood, and implored Tori to stop.

  Tori seemed somewhat taken aback by this. She slid in the mud, came to a stop and rolled back on her haunches, considering Two.

  “Tori, it’s Two. I know you remember me. I know you’re a lot smarter than you seem. I know you can smell Melissa’s blood. I know that you know she’s dead. Can you understand that I didn’t want it, Tori? That I’m sorry? I need you to understand.”

  Tori took a few steps closer, and made that questioning sound Two had heard when they had first met: like a dog yawning. Two held her hand out. Tori sniffed it, growled again, looking up at Two with accusing eyes. Two knelt, and matched Tori’s gaze.

  “I didn’t want to kill her, Tori. I didn’t. Now I have to run. You can stop me … kill me here if you want. That might not be such a bad thing. Or you can come with me. I don’t know how far we’ll get, but it’s me or Abraham now. You have to choose.”

  Tori seemed to be struggling, perhaps attempting to process the words, perhaps only making her own decisions based on what she sensed. Two couldn’t tell. Finally, Tori moved out of Two’s way.

  “Thank you, Tori. We have to go now. You can … God, I’m so sorry. Sam, come on!” Two took Sam’s hand again, and they began running once more down the path. After a moment, Tori caught up to them, overtook them, turned and met Two’s eyes, and then shot away on a diagonal, down a different path. Two relied on blind instinct, as she had so many times before, and followed Tori’s route.

  * * *

  Theroen stood facing his father, trying hard to keep the rage from flooding him completely and drowning his thoughts.

  Abraham’s eyes glittered at him, mocking, as he spoke. “So. After almost four hundred years, things finally get interesting."

  Theroen’s voice was low. Strained. “You murdered her.”

  “I did. I did indeed. She took what was mine.”

  “I was never yours, Abraham.”

  “No, not in your mind, but it matters not. Lisette learned her lesson, and I gained my fledgling back. As is always the case, Theroen, I won. And now we stand here, father and son. Soon you will attack me, and not just because I took one bride from you, but because now I threaten a second.”

  “You cannot have her, Abraham.”

  “I don’t want her. I never did. I thought she was a terrible choice for you, my son. Drugs? Prostitution? She is unclean, Theroen. However did you find her?”

  “I saw her standing on a corner. I saw her working, Abraham, waiting to pick up some strange man and have sex with him, and the strength I sensed in her caught my attention. So much strength, from one in so low a place. Would you even have noticed?”

  “Ah. Strength. Much like Lisette, is she not? Young Two does not like to be owned by anyone. As I said: a terrible choice for a fledgling.”

  “I do not look for slaves, Abraham. I look for equals.”

  “I grow tired of this nonsense, Theroen. It will lead nowhere. Your child, and the half-vampire, and now yet another of my daughters, are all making their escape as we speak.”

  “Good.”

  “We shall see how ‘good’ it is when she feels you die, Theroen.”

  “That is how it is to be then? My life for theirs?”

  “That is the bargain, Theroen. You know me, and you know that I honor my bargains … though I certainly stack the odds in my favor before making them. If she flees tonight and does not return, she will not suffer at my hands. This … this will be worth the price my daughter paid.”

  “I will not make it easy on you, Abraham.”

  “My son, you never have.”

  They were quiet for a moment, father and son, bitter enemies. Theroen knew he faced death, but his love for Two, his rage over Lisette, left him numb. There was no fear. Abraham, sensing this, broke into a malicious grin.

  A single thought came to Theroen in that moment. Whether from his mind, or Abraham’s, he could not say. Get it over with.

  Theroen charged.

  * * *

  Abraham, alive long before the birth of Christ, had met many challenges in his day. Some were human, some vampires, all had sought only to bring about his destruction. None had achieved that goal, and few had even come close.

  Now his son charged across the wet grass, roaring, eyes dark with hatred. Abraham’s amazing mind processed each instant like a still picture floating gently in time’s pool. He had ages to react. Eons. Theroen, powerful as he was, held no threat.

  Abraham stood and waited for his son. He waited to free himself from the chains of his progeny. Melissa, dead. Theroen, dead. Tori would likely turn on Two as soon as Theroen’s death stole the whore’s vampirism away. Perhaps then Tori would become a rogue monster, at least until she was hunted down and destroyed by other vampires, an aberration too dangerous to let live. Abraham no longer cared. He stood at the dawn of a new millennium, and at the edge of the next phase of his life, a phase where he doled out the gifts of his vampirism slowly, to supplicants who would appreciate the power he delivered to them.

  Abraham had time to smile as Theroen charged. Ah, it was going to be glorious.

  * * *

  Hitting Abraham was like hitting a wall of solid concrete. Theroen collided with his father, fingers hooked into claws, seeking to rend and tear. The force of the initial blow alone would have shattered mortal bones. Abraham took only a small step backward.

  Hands like manacles around Theroen’s wrists, forcing his claws away from Abraham’s face. Theroen snarled, lunged forward anyway, oblivious to the pain as his shoulders dislocated, snapping his teeth at Abraham’s neck. He tried to bite, to drink. Perhaps if he could cut Abraham, he might weaken his father.

  Abraham twisted, and pulled Theroen around by the arms. Theroen felt himself flying through the air, heaved to the ground. Abraham landed atop him. The creature was cackling, a horrific, mad sound, happy at last for action, after so many years of dark study.

  Theroen screamed as he felt teeth tear through the flesh of his neck, opening his jugular vein in a warm gush. He struggled against the weight on top of him, to no avail, as the draining sensation began. Abraham was drinking. Laughing. Bathing in Theroen’s blood.

  The world began to grey, and Theroen felt his strength flagging. No chance, now. He could not move Abraham. The pulse of his heart seemed to grow distant, like a receding tide. He saw faces. Lisette. Naomi. Melissa. Tori. Two. He fixated on this last, on the face of this woman that he loved. He wanted to focus. He wanted to see her eyes one last time. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry for e
verything, and that he would meet her in some other place, at the end of the mortal life his demise was buying her. He would wait there for her. If only he could focus. If only he could see her eyes.

  Theroen was still trying to make this happen when he died.

  * * *

  Two felt him go.

  The sensation was like a sharp tugging that pulled at her whole body, and yet held no physical force. She stopped, bewildered for a moment, and then realization flooded in like a dark tide. Sam and Tori were looking at her in confusion, but Two could not see them, could not see anything except blackness before her eyes. She felt Theroen’s presence – so established within her that she had ceased even to notice it – dwindling, blinking out of existence. She felt her knees unhinge, and the gravel by the side of the road they had been following bit into her legs. She didn’t notice. Didn’t care.

  Two tilted her head back and cried out denial to the uncaring stars. Wailing, weeping, she fell to her side, curled up like a baby, uncontrollable shuddering wracking her body. Theroen was gone, gone from her and gone from the world. Gone. Two wept, and screamed, and it was some time before Sam could do anything more than watch.

  At last, Two’s grief subsided enough for her to hear Samantha’s voice calling her name, asking what was wrong. She fought against her tears, fought against the despair threatening to engulf her completely. Already she felt weaker, colder, more human, though she knew that she had not yet begun to revert to humanity. How long would it be before the various gifts Theroen had bestowed upon her withered away? A week? A month?

  There was no time to contemplate this now. She had to get Samantha and Tori away from Abraham. The destroyer. The dark god. The most evil being that she would ever encounter.

  Theroen’s life for hers, but had Two ever truly believed it would come to that? Now she knew it had indeed, and she knew as well that by staying so close to Abraham, she was putting them all in great danger. They had to get away. She stood up, brushing herself off and sniffling.

  “What is it, Two?” Sam asked.

  “It’s over. He’s gone.” Two’s voice was hollow. Dead.

  “Abraham?”

  Two laughed. The sound was without humor. She took a breath and shuddered. “No. Didn’t you listen? Abraham is indestructible. He’s a god. It would be s—stupid to even fight him.”

  Sam looked at her, uncomprehending, and Two felt her grief turn to anger before she could stop it. “He’s dead, don’t you get it? Theroen’s dead, and you don’t even know what that means! You don’t even know what your life cost!”

  Sam blanched, stepped back, frightened by this sudden mood swing. Two saw this, felt despair well up inside her again, and covered her eyes. She could find nothing there in the darkness, no sense of Theroen, nothing to comfort her. After a moment, she looked up again.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. We have to go. Now. While we still can.”

  “Are you going to be okay, Two?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. He’s gone. I owe it to Theroen to make sure you and Tori are safe. After that? Nothing matters. Let’s go.”

  They began a hurried dash along the road, glancing frequently behind them, expecting that Abraham would show up at any moment to finish them all. Eventually they realized that he was not coming, that he would indeed honor his bargain with Theroen and let them go, and so they slowed to a walk, waiting for headlights, waiting for someone who would pull over. Someone Tori could make short work of. Someone with a car.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  Homecoming

  Darren’s building. The hallway outside.

  Two could hear muffled grunts, the occasional cooing of some girl, bedsprings creaking. It sounded like a bad porn movie, and she smiled despite the bitter taste in her mouth. She’d come here because she didn’t know where else to go. Dirty, tired, out of money, too ashamed and too frightened to go to Rhes and Sarah, she had returned to the building she had called home for the past year.

  The trip hadn’t taken long. A car had eventually come along, the driver slowing for the two young women standing in the cold rain. Two had felt bad about rewarding this kindness with death, but she was still a vampire. Still needed to feed. Sam watched in horror, but Two could see the thirst in her eyes. By the end of the car ride Sam, grudging and sullen, had admitted that she was beginning to believe the whole vampire thing.

  They had spent the day in a motel, sleeping. Two had packed Tori into the bathroom, blocking the cracks under the door with towels, giving the girl plenty of blankets with which to build some sort of nest. She and Sam had taken the beds. Two woke, weeping, at sunset. There was no Theroen to wake up next to, and never would be again.

  By that evening, Sam was already looking more human. Two still felt the same. She fed on a victim in an adjacent room, and then the trio had continued toward Brooklyn, toward Darren.

  Darren’s voice, through the door. “That’s good, baby. That’s real good, but you … gotta sound like you’re … getting the best fuck of your life. Course, I know you are, right baby?”

  “Anything you say, Darren.” The girl turned the volume up a notch. Two grimaced. She’d done this. She’d been here. It was a place she never intended to be again. She stood in the same building, but not in the same place. She had strength now, power now, purpose now. Descent and rebirth. Two had survived this process twice already. She would survive a third.

  Two kicked the door, hard, just below the lock. The frame splintered and the entire mechanism fell to the floor with a clatter. The door swept inward on creaking hinges, ricocheted off the wall with a flat smacking sound, and came to a stop.

  Darren was quick; Two had to give him that. The door had not even finished its swing before he was rolling off of the girl, yanking a drawer in the nightstand open and pulling a gun from within. In a moment more he was up on his feet, pointing the weapon toward the dark hallway. From his perspective, there were only vague grey shapes. Two’s eyes were much better. Before her stood Darren, naked and still half-aroused, gun cocked and held out in front of him.

  “Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” he snarled.

  “Put down the gun, dumbass, before you get hurt.”

  “Answer the fucking question, bitch. Who is that? You one of my girls? Gonna get you some revenge, maybe put some holes in old Darren? Answer me or I start shooting.”

  “Something like that. I’ll give you a few hints. She’s short, she’s cute and she’s been missing for a month or two.”

  The gun wavered for a brief moment. Darren’s eyes registered vague surprise before growing icy again. “I didn’t authorize no vacation, Two.”

  “I didn’t fucking ask for one.”

  Darren sneered at her, still unafraid. Two knew that look, and it was all she could do not to charge screaming into the room, to tear her former pimp limb from limb. It spoke of Darren’s complete disdain for his girls. It was a look that carried with it all the baggage of his beatings, his orders, his forcing addiction upon them. Two tried to think of Theroen. Tried to remain calm.

  “Put the gun down. Now.” She said.

  Darren actually smiled at this, and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Here’s how it’s going to go: You’re going to come in here, and I’m going to kick the living shit out of you. If you beg real nice, maybe I’ll stop before I kill you. If that’s how it goes, then you’ll get back to your room, and heal up, and get your ass out where it belongs, and maybe then I might give you a ration some time this fucking century.”

  Two laughed. After the blood, heroin had lost its appeal. “Last chance, Darren. Put down the gun.”

  “No.”

  Two shrugged, and released her grip on Tori’s shoulder. What happened next was better even than she could have expected. Tori sprang into the room, howling, so quick that she seemed a blur even to Two. Darren’s expression moved from confidence to terror in an instant. He got off one shot, wild, and the recoil from the gun caused him
to drop it. Tori leapt, and Two was treated to the wholly satisfying view of Darren loosing his bladder on his own feet. He ducked at the last possible moment, and Tori sailed over him, into the bed.

  Darren scrabbled away on all fours, making noises that sounded something like words, something like screams. There was a choking sound from the bed, and when Tori reappeared, she was drenched in crimson. She leapt down to the floor and advanced on Darren, growling low in her throat, the rumble of a jungle cat. Darren had backed himself into a corner, soiled, wet with piss and tears, and was making some sort of plea for his life.

  Two called Tori’s name, and the vampire stopped, less than two feet from Darren. She raised her lip in a sneer that was oddly human, then turned, picked the gun up in her teeth, and brought it to Two.

  “Don’t do that. Dogs do that. Use your hands.” Two’s voice was soft, her heart not really in the scolding. She was too busy watching Darren to ensure he didn’t move. She entered the room, Sam and Tori trailing behind, and stood by Darren’s desk, looking at him. He sat on the floor, glaring up, making the slow move from fear to smoldering humiliation.

  “Stand up.”

  “Bitch, I ain’t doing shit for you.”

  Two’s expression was almost bored as she swung the gun upward and fired twice, putting a shot just to either side of Darren’s head. Behind her, Sam made a small shrieking noise. Darren’s eyes went wide, his face paper white.

  “I don’t have to miss, Darren. Trust me on that, ‘kay? I’m in charge, now. Stand the fuck up.”

  Darren did what he was told.

  “Put on some fucking clothes. I’ve seen all of that that I plan on seeing, thank you.”

  Darren struggled into a pair of jeans, very nearly catching himself in the zipper. Behind Two, Sam giggled. Darren shot her a look that made it perfectly clear that being laughed at by women was not something he was used to tolerating. Two waved the gun, drawing his attention.