“Now, Tori. Go!” he roared, and sudden strength seemed to flow into Tori’s body. She leapt up and ran, reverting to all fours, pelting across the yard to the forest, yelping. Two felt tears on her cheeks, hot like branding irons against the cold and the slush. She was growling obscenities at Abraham, over and over, unable to stop. Abraham smiled at her, quiet, in control once again.
“You’re a fascinating young woman, Two, but too good. Too good. It is in many ways a shame to destroy you, but I think that were I to break you, I would destroy the same qualities that make you so intriguing.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, little girl, don’t you remember? I’m possessed of no such abilities.” Abraham chuckled. The sound was like turning earth. Like scraping stones.
“I’m here to kill you, Abraham.”
“I know. Oh, I know. You might even have succeeded in surprising me. I must admit that this is the last place I had expected you ever to return. The very last. Yes, you might have come upon me unawares, and at least had that small satisfaction before your death. Alas, Two, you have not. I have had some help.”
Two knew it before he spoke her name.
Abraham smiled. Moved aside. Gestured. “Is this not true, Sam?”
Two turned to meet the eyes of her betrayer.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Two.” Sam looked sick with fear and shame and regret. “I’m so sorry. Two, I’m sorry.”
“You fucking bitch …”
“You don’t understand!” Sam was crying. “He came to me last night, after I left. He said if I didn’t tell him what you were going to do, that he’d kill you anyway, and he’d never finish me! I didn’t have a choice!”
Two was taken aback. “Never finish you?”
Sam took a step forward. “He’s a god, Two. We could be children of God. You know what it’s like. Never sick, never weak. How could I not want it?”
“Not like this, Sam. You don’t want what he’s offering.”
“I do! He gave me a taste of the blood last night. It was … oh, God. I want it. I need it!”
Abraham observed them, silent, smiling to himself. Two whirled, faced him, hatred now beating down the last of her fear.
“Tell her! Tell her the truth! Tell her what your blood does!”
“The truth, Two? The truth is that I have escaped the curse of my blood. I have discovered, through much experimentation, that my blood can be diluted. I can have now what I could never have before: a true fledgling, dedicated and attentive. I will dole out my blood in small amounts, and slowly Samantha will be transformed.”
“A slave, Abraham. That’s what she’ll always be to you. You’ll never finish her, and even if you do, you’ll keep her here forever.”
“Can you take the word of this prostitute, Samantha? This unclean whore who would throw away your chance at immortality for the sake of her dead lover?”
Two turned back to Sam, plaintive. “Sam, please …”
“I’m sorry, Two.” Sam took another step forward. A third. The distance was rapidly closing.
Abraham spoke again. “This end was inevitable, Two, from the moment you murdered my daughter.”
Two closed her eyes and felt despair welling. It ate at her courage once again. Accept this? Get it over with? Lie down and die?
Inside her something grew. A spark became a flicker, a flicker a blaze. Death meant reunion with Theroen, so what reason was there to fear it? If she must die, so be it. She would do so on her own terms, though, not like this.
Sam was nearly within grabbing distance. Two looked up at her, met her eyes, and shook her head.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
Action as instinct. Two moved so quickly that Sam had no chance of stopping her. Abraham could have, if he’d wanted to, but Abraham simply stood where he was, his black grin never wavering. In one swift move, she drew Darren’s gun from the waistband of her pants, leveled it at the girl in front of her, and fired. Once. Twice. A third shot went wild, but it didn’t matter. The first bullet hit Sam in the neck. The second entered at her forehead and removed the top half of Sam’s skull, spraying it backward in a gout of bone and brain. Sam’s eyes looked confused for a moment, then went blank and lifeless. She exhaled in a long, rattling sigh, and dropped to the ground.
Two was already spinning, pointing the gun at Abraham, and now he moved. She felt it yanked from her grip before she could squeeze off a shot. A hand she couldn’t see collided with her midsection and sent her hurtling backwards, rain-softened ground rising up to meet her. On pavement, the landing would have shattered bone. Two lay in the grass, writhing in pain. Abraham towered over her.
“You’re very good at making things difficult, Two.”
Two wheezed, finding her breath. “Fuckin’ A.”
“Can you run?”
“Break as many of my fucking ribs as you want, bastard. I can run.”
“Then I think you had better do so. Who knows? The forest is quite dark. Perhaps I shall lose you.”
Two looked up at the smiling figure of death above her, laughing to itself at this little piece of nonsense. Abraham wanted a chase, that was all; a little action after so many years without. Two knew it, and knew that her last chance was rapidly expiring. She reached into the interior pocket of her leather jacket, and brought out the only hope she had left.
White powder, some of it clumped with moisture, some still dry. Heroin. Sam had found it in Darren’s safe, and Two had brought it with her. She had no interest in it now, not for herself, not for Molly, not for Tori.
But maybe for Abraham.
Two hurled the drug at his face, heard him inhale in surprise, pulled herself to her feet, and ran for the forest.
* * *
That drug, Theroen, more than any other, is poison to our kind.
Abraham’s words, echoing in her brain as Two had stared into the safe, at the bags of heroin Darren kept therein. This was not the street grade junk he gave to his girls, nor even the private supply of cleaner product he kept for special occasions. This was uncut, raw, too powerful yet for use. Now it coated Abraham’s lungs, his nasal passages, the ducts of his eyes.
Two could hear him screaming.
Pain, rage, hate; Two heard the depths of her own soul reflected back at her in Abraham’s voice, and grinned with malice as she ran. She did not know if the heroin would kill him, or only slow him down and give her a few moments more to live before her tore her limb from limb. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore, except the deep, black well of joy within her. She had done damage to a god. She had hurt the thing that could not be hurt. Two laughed as she ran, a maniacal cackle of glee and hatred.
She slipped, slid, fell down a short, rocky embankment, cuts on her arms and face, still laughing. Hysterical, now, and barely able to run. Something seemed to stab her in the side with every gasp. Two didn’t care. Her laughter came in gasps and shrieks. Behind her, she could hear Abraham crashing through the bushes. Roaring. Snarling. Two screamed obscenities back at him, egging him on, daring him to kill her, laughing at his rage.
The path led to a sheer rock wall, the tangled underbrush on either side too thick to climb through. Two skidded to a halt under the limbs of a tall oak, and looked around in desperation. She was trapped. Behind her, she felt Abraham’s presence growing. There was no chance that way, and no other alternative. Death had come for her. Two turned, put her back to the rock, and faced that death grinning.
Abraham staggered into the clearing and came to a stop ten feet in front of her, his face twisted with hate. He coughed, rubbed an arm across his eyes, wobbled slightly, and Two knew she had hurt him badly.
“You like it, fucker?” she screamed at the figure. “How does it feel? You flying high yet?”
“I’m going to cut the skin from your body in strips. I’m going to hang you upside-down. Keep the … blood at your head. Keep you alive.” Abraham’s voice gurgled. He turned to one side and dry heaved, broke into a fit of
coughing. There was blood on his face, and Two realized the heroin was eating away the soft tissue of his mouth and lungs. Abraham swung back toward her, and his eyes spoke now only of death.
Two beckoned to him. “Don’t tease me, sweetheart. Do it. Do it!”
Abraham lurched forward, moving at a fraction of his former speed, unsteady in his step. Two unhooked her machete and prepared for death.
Something dropped from the tree above, hit Abraham with full force, and knocked him from his feet. Snarling, screaming, writhing limbs. Tori. Two howled in triumph, racing forward, raving, cackling.
“Tori! What are you doing?!” Abraham’s voice was weak. Confused. Its power was lost, and this more than anything filled Two with hope. Tori was at her peak, energized by rage and hatred, and the desire to protect her friend. Now was the time, yet Two could not get a clear shot with the machete without hurting the girl.
“Tori, move! You have to move!”
Too late. Abraham shoved forward, and threw Tori from him. The vampire girl collided with Two, knocked her backward, knocked the machete from her hand. Abraham advanced now, still fast, despite the heroin. Tori got in his way, was knocked aside, and landed hard. Two could hear the crack of her head on rock from six feet away, like ice snapping on a lake in midwinter. Two fell to her knees, scrabbling at the ground.
Reaching, searching, her eyes never leaving Abraham’s advancing form. She felt the machete’s handle, clasped it, and brought it up in a last, desperate arc. She swung the heavy blade with all of her strength, screaming prayers in a nonsense language to an indistinct God. Prayers for speed. Prayers for strength. Prayers that it was not too late.
The blade caught Abraham just below the chin, carving into the skin of his neck. For Two, it was like chopping at stone. She felt pain lance through her arm as muscles separated, tore, gave out, but did not draw back, did not stop her swing. Abraham’s head separated from his body, flew up and backward into the air, hit the ground rolling, and came to a stop by Tori’s inert form.
Two rolled away from the headless trunk, which stood for a moment as if welded to the ground. Great black jets sprayed forth from the ragged stump of neck, and the hands clutched at its sides as if searching still to tear Two apart. Then at last like Goliath it fell, borne down by its own weight, and lay still upon the ground. Abraham, the dark god, elder vampire of the New World, lay dead.
* * *
Blackness overtook Two, and she lay on her back for some time, covered in filth and blood, heedless of the slush soaking into her clothes. Gasping, sobbing, calling out to Theroen, Two lay on the cold ground until she at last realized that Theroen wasn’t coming, and dragged herself to a sitting position.
Tori.
She made her way to Tori’s body and bent down, fearing the worst. To her relief, Tori’s body was already healing, the flow of blood from the wound on the forehead slowing. She was breathing in deep, slow, steady breaths. Two shook her gently, and Tori opened her eyes. She sat up, groggy, and looked at Two, then at the head on the ground, and broke into tears. Two held her tightly, kissing her face, her hair, unable to believe they had both survived it.
“Oh, Tori. Oh, sweetheart. We did it. He’s dead. Tori, he’s dead!”
They took the head back with them to the house. Two wanted it nowhere near the body. She knew that vampires possessed formidable powers of regeneration, and if someone had told her that Abraham’s head could somehow reattach itself to his body, she would not have doubted them.
They emerged from the forest together, staggering, leaning on each other for strength and making their way slowly toward the mansion, toward warmth. Two’s head was throbbing, though she couldn’t remember hitting it on anything. Her right arm felt as if on fire, every muscle torn and pulled. Tori shuffled along, leaning against her, still dizzy and sick from the blow to the head. Neither woman was capable of mustering more strength than was necessary to keep their limbs moving.
The side door was locked, and so they made their way toward the front. Two didn’t know what she would do if that door wouldn’t open. Break a window, perhaps. It didn’t matter. They needed to get inside. The mansion was hope where no hope had been. It was warmth. Survival. Two wondered if she was crying. Her face was too numb from cold to tell.
The front door opened with ease, swinging wide, opening on the rooms in which she had spent the past two months. Two made a choked, sobbing noise of gratitude and stumbled inside, slamming the door behind her. She eased Tori down onto the plush oriental carpet, and staggered to the entrance to the basement. She threw Abraham’s head down the stairs, then bolted the heavy oak door at their top.
The pain in her head and arm were making her dizzy. Two stumbled forward into the first room she could see. The media room. Melissa’s blood still stained the carpet, and Two looked away. She struggled to one of the couches, fell down upon it, and let black unconsciousness take her.
* * *
She woke in the early morning, the sunlight still painful on her skin, and moved to a couch that lay in the shadows. Here she slept the rest of the day, and into the next evening. When at last she came out of her slumber, she found Tori curled up next to her. Her head still ached, but only slightly. Her arm was better, though still painful to move. Two felt very human indeed, and wondered if her regression to that form had been hastened as she had healed.
She sat up, looking around, trying to determine what hour of the day it was. The media room’s windows were dark. Two could see smears of dirt in the hallway, and realized that during the day, Tori had dragged herself into the front closet.
“Smart girl,” Two said. She turned on one of the televisions. Sights and sounds flashed by, news reports on things she didn’t care about. She flipped channels and found a cable access station broadcasting the time and date.
Near midnight, mid-December. It would be Christmas soon, the television informed her. Had she done her shopping? To Two it felt like she had lived ten years in the course of the past two months. She turned off the TV and stood on shaky legs. She was starving, but not for blood. What she really wanted was a cheeseburger. This realization made her laugh, even as tears sprung to her eyes.
Two made her way upstairs into the room she had shared with Theroen. Her clothes were still there, in closet and dressers. Bathroom supplies, books of poetry, it was as if she had never left. Two thought of Theroen, lying next to her on the bed, and the ache in her heart leapt to the forefront.
“I could kill you a thousand times, Abraham, and we’d never be even. You took everything I had.”
Two went to take a shower.
* * *
They lived at the mansion for six weeks, and in that time Tori began to show definite signs of returning to humanity. Christmas came and went, the New Year began. Two and Tori healed. As her mind changed, Tori began to behave in new ways. She mimicked sounds, and was beginning to understand simple questions that Two asked.
She was still strong. Still fast. Two wondered if the changes that vampirism had made to the girl’s physiology would ever truly leave. She wondered if Tori would ever fully regain her mind. She didn’t know.
There were only two moments of unpleasantness left for Two during her stay at the mansion. The first occurred early: the burning of Abraham’s remains. Two had taken care of the head first, out in the yard, dousing it with gasoline and covering it with kindling. She’d taken the machete to the skull, blackened and cracked by the flames, and scattered the pieces around the grounds. She’d repeated the process with the body. If Abraham could somehow heal himself, it was beyond her power to do anything more to stop it.
The second occurrence came a week later. Exploring the mansion, she had come upon a staircase, behind a set of iron doors at the back of Abraham’s study. The stairs led to depths deeper even than the basement in which she had found herself, that first night after meeting Theroen. Two had ventured down into the dark and foreboding space with trepidation, holding nothing more than a single flashligh
t.
The sight upon reaching the bottom had forced a cry of despair from her lips. There, on a stone bier, lay her lover. Theroen, pale and broken, was spread out on the slab. His body had been cleaned and dressed in a dark suit. It appeared as if Abraham had been preparing to perform some sort of ceremony. Two had run across the room, bit into her left wrist hard enough to bring blood, barely aware of the pain, and held it above Theroen’s open mouth.
Nothing.
Crying, begging, Two held her neck against his lips. They were cold and dead. Theroen did not move, did not change, and Two wrapped her arms about the corpse and wept.
She knew that she could not bring herself to burn Theroen, and so left him there, climbing the stairs and closing the doors, piling objects in front of them. Stone statues, marble tables, anything heavy. Tori helped her move them.
Two hoped Theroen had found peace. She hoped he was somewhere with Lisette, loving her, telling her stories of Two and what fun they would have whenever Two finally joined them. She wondered if she had the strength to go on without him, and could not find an answer.
She wondered if some night she might awaken to find a vampire hovering above her, eyes like fire, bringing retribution for Abraham’s death.
She wondered if any of it even mattered.
* * *
Chapter 7
The Search
An apartment in SoHo. Fifteenth floor.
“One fish … Two fish …” Tori read haltingly, struggling with the words, anxious to please. She looked up at Two, frustrated. “This is hard, Two! It’s hard.”
Two smiled, nodded, dragged at her cigarette. “I know, sweetheart. You’re doing fine.”
The II AM Trilogy Collection Page 24
