Matt and Lola got me back to my apartment, and though I wasn’t fully aware of them, I could feel their anxiety. I had the impression they nervously moved through the apartment.
I would pass out every now and again, and when I would wake it would feel like hours had passed, though it was likely only a few minutes.
I didn’t feel the broken bones anymore.
But I felt like I was on fire.
If I could have opened my eyes and looked around for any length of time, I would have checked for flames coming off my body. The stinging had become a full-on burn, and it was little consolation that my body was repairing itself.
I had never had injuries even close to this. The worst had been when I lost a couple of my fingers. This was early on as a vampire and the stinging as my fingers regenerated was enough that I could only lie down while my body worked away.
It had taken a whole twenty minutes.
I would give every finger on both of my hands in a heartbeat in exchange for this.
At some point in the night, I either started to hallucinate or dream, and maybe it doesn’t matter which one.
I saw the left-hand female of The Three in my bedroom sitting on the edge of my bed, one hand on the calf of my left leg as she smiled.
The burning in that part of my leg seemed to subside and I felt able to breathe normally once again, instead of the ragged, short inhalations I had been taking.
I asked her, or maybe I just wondered to myself, why she was the one doing all the talking. Why the other two didn’t speak to me the way she did, and she replied that that’s why there were three of them—because sometimes a particular voice was needed.
After that, feeling really bold, I asked her if she was real. Not just here in my bedroom. But at all.
She grabbed the calf of my right leg and answered me.
“Of course,” she said, with the utmost certainty, and then she was gone. Even though it felt like my eyes were already open, they opened again and my bedroom came back into view as if I had gone into the previous image and had come through it back into the same place.
The colors settled down as if someone had adjusted the display of my vision on some large computer somewhere, maybe even the left-hand female herself, and I realized that I was awake again.
My legs felt as good as new, and I moved them around a little before realizing that I still felt the burn from the waist up. But it seemed as if my lower body was finished.
If I hadn’t just partially healed from full body injuries, I would have thought the feeling in my torso was excruciating, but instead I felt triumphant. I was going to come through this night and I was halfway there.
Instead of feeling like I was burning on the stake, I felt as if I had been tossed onto some dying embers. This I could deal with.
I closed my eyes again, comfortable enough to sleep normally, and I didn’t wake again until mid-morning. And when I did, I felt better than ever.
7
Lola and Matt looked like shit.
As I walked out into the living room, the two of them were slumped over, half-sitting, half-lying down on the couch and chair.
They both looked up at me with red eyes and weariness all over their faces.
“Good morning, sunshines,” I said, and they both looked like they wanted to punch me.
Lola waved me over like she couldn’t muster the energy to stand up but wanted me close by. I sat down next to her on the arm of the chair and she put her arms around me in a hug and leaned her head against my body.
“God, you looked awful. I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said, and I was glad, once again, I hadn’t had to see myself.
I got up, walked over to Matt, and cuddled up next to him on the couch. He pulled me tightly to him and kissed the side of my head.
“Yeah, you were like a lumpy bag of skin,” he said. “And, you screamed all night.”
That was news to me, but it seemed to make sense.
I kissed him back and then jumped up from the couch.
“I’ve got to go back out tonight,” I said, wishing I could go back out right now. I felt like I had so much energy that I could push the walls of my apartment back with my mind only. I needed to run or jump around or something.
Lola and Matt stared at me for a couple of seconds before erupting into a chorus of “absolutely nots” and “no ways.”
“Guys, I gotta get back out there. You’ll both come with me this time, but that’s where I need to be. That woman, from last night, she was trying to make me stay away, so I know that’s where I need to go.”
“What if she’s still there?” Lola asked.
“I’m sure she is,” I said. “But that’s why you’re going to come.”
Lola dropped her head into her hands, and I wasn’t sure if she was crying or exasperated or maybe even scared.
“Vic,” she said and threw her hands up.
I walked over to her and grabbed both of them.
“I know. But I’ve got to go.”
Matt was surprisingly calm and started to make his way into the kitchen. He opened up the top of the coffee maker and ran some water from the tap into the coffee carafe to fill it up.
“So when do we leave tonight?” he asked.
I thought about it quickly, but I already knew.
“Midnight.”
* * *
God, I felt fucking fantastic.
I was tempted to go out to my spot that afternoon, sunlight and all, and then decided that would just be dumb.
But I felt the odd need to go outside, to go out into the sun and see how much I could stand. I had the feeling that the first few sizzles would be nothing for me anymore, and I wondered how long I could withstand it.
But that wasn’t at all what I needed to be focused on.
The three of us discussed what we might find out about this upcoming night, and how we might go about keeping ourselves in one piece, so as to avoid a repeat of last night.
Lola did another count, and we were up to 43 vampires in the city.
Again, the feeling that Ivy was behind the vampire increase came to me. But the numbers were increasing too fast.
Matt seemed to read my mind.
“You know, maybe Ivy isn’t the only one doing the creating. Maybe his creations are creating as well.”
I considered this, and it accounted for the rising numbers of vampires. But it didn’t seem to fall in line with his interests.
“Why would he have his new creations creating?” I asked.
“Safety in numbers,” Matt said, which made sense to me, but still didn’t quite explain it. “But, maybe,” he stood up here and walked around, “he’s spreading the word. You know, like an evangelist. Getting more vampires to join him in—what does he call it—immortality without a price?”
With my hand resting on my chin, I tapped my cheek with my finger (and enjoyed moving every precious bone in it) while letting that sink in.
“Okay,” I said, thinking as I spoke, “maybe he is. But the question is still ‘why?’ He doesn’t need to. He only needs more of his own creations to feed on when he starts to get run down.”
“But the numbers I’m getting are much more than that, I think,” Lola said. “How often do you think he needs fresh blood?”
For some reason, I thought it was about once every several decades, but that was just a guess.
“Fifty years. Seventy-five, maybe. That’s my best guess.”
“Yeah, so the numbers I’m getting seem way off from that. Why create—or have others create—so many?”
“Because he’s an outcast,” Matt said.
We sat there for a moment in silence as Lola and I considered that statement. The more seconds passed, the more impressed I was with Matt’s insight.
Matt was right. Ivy was an outcast. The two of us, Lola and me, had been immediately repulsed by his presence, as any vampire would have been.
At the time, I hadn’t known what he was up to, but I sens
ed it. And not just because I’m a knower. Lola had picked it up too.
Matt, being so young at the time, was not attuned to the same things we were. And, of course, we weren’t as attuned to the same things he was. Being new, things that Lola and I had long since ceased to notice, Matt was highly aware of. And of course, he was most attuned to the things he had just left behind. Like simple human emotions and needs.
Like loneliness.
Ivy was lonely. He wanted more like himself.
I laughed a little under my breath as I realized just how shallowly under the surface human emotions were for most vampires.
They never went away. Not even after centuries of immortality. The need to be loved, to belong, was chief among them.
Ivy had escaped what he thought were the chains of being immortal, but he had created a problem for himself, and not just his ever-rotting flesh.
Vampires wouldn’t go near him. And he wasn’t human, plain and simple.
And so he became a category of creature all to himself. And he didn’t like it.
This explained not only creating new vampires, but having those new vampires create. It was like having a group of infants all to yourself to mold and teach as you will.
It was just unfortunate that some of those infants would be made into food and some of them given his “gift.” There was a hierarchy in all things.
I felt marginally better after this. Maybe because I realized that Ivy wasn’t as indestructible as I had originally thought. He was just like me. Like all of us. And we had to take him down.
An idea popped into my head. When it hit me I was surprised I hadn’t asked sooner.
“Lola, can you locate a concentration of vampires? Like all in one area? Can you get that?”
She didn’t respond to me, but unfocused her eyes a little and sat still.
“I’ve never exactly tried this before,” she said, with some uncertainty, but I picked up that she was enjoying flexing her muscles in new ways.
She tilted her head, like she was exerting a lot of effort to pull up this information.
“I’m not sure, but there seems to be a lot of vampires on the...eastern side of the city. Whether or not they are all together, I’m not sure. But it strikes me as a little odd.
The eastern side of the city was mostly industrial, and some of it long abandoned. It actually struck me as a perfect hunting grounds now that I thought about it, though I would have never gone there myself.
There was something I found distasteful about preying upon transient and desperate people, though they were generally considered easy pickings. Maybe that was why.
There were very few residential areas that way, though what was there was pretty run down. You didn’t live there if you had a choice.
I didn’t need to keep up with this train of thought in order to put together the puzzle pieces of Ivy’s thinking. It seems like he had set up camp there.
Matt and Lola were talking to each other when I came out of my thoughts, and I interrupted them to share what I had deduced.
They both thought it seemed likely.
“Why don’t we just go there then?” Lola asked. “Save ourselves the trip to the bars.”
It was the logical response.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I still want to go to my territory tonight. See what’s there.”
Lola didn’t argue with me.
“You know, I could use a snack anyway,” Matt said, rubbing his stomach, and I remembered that despite how far we had all come, in the end, we all still needed to feed.
* * *
We set out at midnight, just like we had discussed.
I’m not going to lie. I was nervous.
Matt and Lola flanked me, and unless we were met by a dozen vampires who wanted us all broken, we’d be okay if one or two showed up.
Then I got scared that maybe Ivy had sent a dozen of his newest creations out to meet us.
Although it would make too much of a scene. I think even Ivy would respect those boundaries.
One vampire attacking another on a small, dark street was one thing. A vampire rumble in the middle of a busy street was another.
I tried to put my nerves to rest the best I could and continue.
When we turned the corner onto the party street, I thought there were an awful lot of flashing lights. And there was. From police cars.
There must have been four on the next few blocks alone.
We passed by a man in his twenties (his actual twenties) who was leaned up against the side of a building and being attended to my emergency personnel.
It looked like he had been cut pretty good on the side of his head. Enough blood had dripped onto his shirt that I felt both hungry and jealous at the same time.
His friends stood around looking nervous and talking quickly to one another.
We finally arrived at my favorite place—the bar where I had met Matt, and the one I was trying to get to last night.
Inside, in the dim lighting with red decorative accents, I immediately relaxed and settled in to the rhythm that I was used to. I remembered that I did actually need to eat and began looking around for a suitable target.
Matt went off to the bar to get us some drinks, and Lola and I sat down at a table. We didn’t speak to one another, not with our mouths anyway, and it was amazing how normal this felt right now. Like we had just slid right back into our old routine, ignoring or forgetting all the things we had seen and learned.
A glass shattered and I thought a server or a patron had dropped their drink, but then came the unmistakable sounds of a fight.
I looked over toward the bar to see four or five guys (human guys) in a jumble with one another and the female bar tender backing away and calling over the security guys.
Matt was off in a corner of the bar, still waiting for drinks and paying close attention as well.
Two huge, bald men in black t-shirts went after the group of fighters and did their best to separate them, but they seemed to be having extreme difficulty breaking it up.
The group was a tornado of violence. They knocked over a small bar table and almost crushed a group of women standing too close. In fact, I think one of the women got grazed by an errant fist as I saw the reflex of her hand go to her face.
If they kept going like this, Lola and I were going to have to move soon.
The security guys, with biceps bulging, each wrestled with two guys at a time and had to call another black-t-shirted guy over.
The fighters were eventually pushed to the door and thrown out.
In all of my years hunting in bars and clubs, I’ve never actually seen someone literally get thrown out of a bar, but there I was, watching the biggest, bulkiest security guy actually pick up one of the men by his shirt and pants and toss him out the door.
I was pretty sure the guys weren’t going to move on, but all three security guys stood in the doorway. I guess the fighters got the picture.
This was starting out as a really aggressive night.
I had seen plenty of bar fights in my time, but that one took the prize for the most unruly.
Disturbed, I turned my attention back to hunting and Matt arrived at the table with our drinks. I could see him eyeing a woman at the bar who spoke excitedly to her girlfriends, no doubt, about the fight that had just occurred. She’d be easy pickings for Matt.
Lola was here only as support, as she was still a week or so off from needing to eat, so I communicated to her to give me her opinion for a suitable target, and she moved her eyes over toward another table where a single man was sitting.
I realized quickly why she had picked him up. He wasn’t going to be food.
He was a vampire.
Initially, I was disturbed that I hadn’t picked up on him yet, but I guess the fight had taken all of my attention. Then I wondered why he hadn’t yet approached us, or at least gotten our attention as was vampire courtesy to do. I had never seen him before at all, which wasn’t that unusual, but I
felt nervous. As I looked over, he must have noticed us, or at least felt it was time to approach us.
He got up from his table, and a few seconds later was standing between Lola and me.
He was boyish looking, which made me think he had been turned at sixteen or seventeen. Trapped as a teenager forever, except he had the air of age that all vampires carried, which made him seem older. Old enough to get into this bar for instance.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, shaking his bangs out of his eyes. “Come with me. We have quite a walk.”
I must have looked at him like I wasn’t going anywhere without an explanation because he quickly continued.
“Raven sent me. She said I’d find you here.”
I immediately knew he was lying.
“How do you know Raven?” I said, playing along. I had never known Raven to keep much company and I was curious how he would get around this.
“I’m her acolyte,” he said, and though I appreciated his creativity, now I was really suspicious.
“Acolyte?” I said.
“Most magics have them at one time or another. I’ve been away for a while, but... something drew me back.”
I had never heard of magics having acolytes, but that didn’t mean the system didn’t exist. I just didn’t know that many magics. In fact, Raven was the only one. I continued, my curiosity in full force.
“Okay, so why did she send you to get us?”
“You were told to come here tonight, right? By your gift?”
I was genuinely shocked that he knew I was a knower, and it made me doubt my initial impression of him. But I was still getting the sense that he was lying. Only now I realized that if he knew I was a knower, he would know I knew he was lying.
I looked directly into his eyes and something behind them pulled me forward. He did know that I knew he was lying. He didn’t directly communicate it to me, but something about him said “trust me.”
I wondered how much Lola and Matt were picking up on. Lola might be catching on and Matt may have the impression that something wasn’t as it seemed to be, but I was going to have to take the lead here.
I wanted to ask how he knew about my gift, but I held on to it for later.
Bored To Death_A Vampire Thriller Page 16
