“This place is a dump.” Willie placed a finger on one nostril and blew the contents of his nose onto a patch of clover.
“It’s better on the inside,” encouraged Butts. “You’ll see.”
Unfortunately, the inside was even less impressive. The dust-covered furniture Colin had pegged as antique was damaged and rotting.
“You call this treasure?” Willie punched Butts square in the nose.
Butts dropped to the floor, bleeding and hysterical.
“This is good stuff, Willie! It’ll clean up nice! Worth a couple thousand quid, I swear!”
Willie and Jake walked away from Butts, and he crawled behind them, babbling.
A moment later, Colin was alone.
The pain in his ribs sharpened with every intake of breath.
If he made a run for it, they’d catch him easily. But if he did nothing, he was a dead man.
He needed a weapon.
Colin crept into the kitchen, mindful of the creaking floorboards. Perhaps the drawers contained a weapon or some kind.
“What you doing in here, eh? Nicking silver?” Jake slapped him across the face.
Colin staggered back, his feet becoming rubber. Then the floor simply ceased to be there. He dropped, straight down, landing on his arse at the bottom of the root cellar.
Everything went fuzzy, and then black.
Colin awoke in darkness.
He felt around, noticed his leg bent at a funny angle.
The touch made him cry out.
Broken. Badly, from the size of the swelling.
Colin peeled his eyes wide, tried to see. There was no light at all. The trap door, leading to the kitchen, was closed. Not that it mattered; he couldn’t have climbed up the ladder anyway.
He sat up, tears erupting onto his cheeks. There was a creaking sound above him, and then a sudden burst of light.
“I see you’re still alive, eh?”
Colin squinted through the glare, made out the bowler hat.
“No worries, mate. We won’t let you starve to death down there. We’re not barbarians. Willie will be down shortly to finish you off. Promise it’ll be quick. Right, Willie?”
Willie’s laugh was an evil thing.
“See you in a bit.”
The trap door closed.
Fear rippled through Colin, but it was overwhelmed by something greater.
Anger.
Colin had ever been the victim. From his boyhood days, being beaten by his alcoholic father, up to his nagging ex-wife, suing him into the recesses of poverty.
Well, if his miserable life was going to end here, in a foul-smelling dirt cellar, then so be it.
But he wasn’t going without a fight.
Colin pulled himself along the cold ground, dragging his wounded leg. He wanted the boning knife, the one he’d left curled in Van Helsing’s hand.
When Jake came down to finish him off, the fat bastard was going to get a nice surprise.
Colin’s hand touched moisture, blood or some other type of grue, so he knew he was close. He reached into the inky blackness, finding Van Helsing’s body, trailing down over his shoulder . . .
“What in the hell?”
Colin brought his other hand over, groped around.
It made no sense.
Van Helsing’s head, which had been practically severed from his shoulders, had reattached itself. The neck was completely intact. No gaping wound, no deep cut.
“Can’t be him.”
Perhaps another body had been dumped down there, possibly Butts. Colin touched the face.
No beard.
Grazing the mouth with his fingers, Colin winced and stuck a digit past the clammy lips.
It was cold and slimy inside the mouth. Revolting. But Colin probed around for almost an entire minute, searching for teeth that weren’t there.
This was Van Helsing. And he had completely healed.
Which was impossible. Unless—
“Jesus Christ.” Colin recoiled, scooting away from the body.
He was trapped in the dark with a vampire.
When would Van Helsing awake? Damn good thing the bloke was chained down. Who knows what horrors he could commit if he were free?
Colin repeated that thought, and grinned.
Perhaps if he helped the poor sod escape, Van Helsing would be so grateful he’d take care of the goons upstairs.
The idea vanished when Colin remembered Van Helsing’s words. All the poor sod wanted was to die. He didn’t want to kill anyone.
“Bloody hell. If I were a vampire, I’d do things—”
Colin halted mid-sentence. His works were in a sardine can, inside his breast pocket. He reached for them, took out the hypo.
It just might work.
Crawling back to Van Helsing, Colin probed until he found the bony neck. He pushed the needle in, then eased back the plunger, drawing out blood.
Vampire blood.
Tying off his own arm and finding his vein in the dark wasn’t a problem; he’d done it many times before.
Teeth clenched, eyes shut, he gave himself the shot.
But there was no rush.
Only pain.
The pain seared up his arm, as if someone was yanking out his veins with pliers.
Colin cried out. When the tainted blood reached his heart, the muscle stopped cold, killing him instantly.
Colin opened his eyes.
He was still in the cellar, but he could see perfectly fine. He wondered where the light could be coming from, but a quick look around found no source.
Colin stood, realizing with a start that the pain in his leg had vanished.
So, in fact, had all of his other pain. He lifted his shirt, expecting to see bruised ribs, but there wasn’t a mark on them.
Even the withdrawal symptoms had vanished.
The hypodermic was still in his hand. Colin stared at it, remembering.
“It worked. It bloody well worked.”
Van Helsing still lay sprawled out on the floor, face down.
Colin looked at him, and he began to drool. Hunger surged through him, an urge so completely overwhelming it dwarfed his addiction to heroin.
Without resisting the impulse, he fell to the ground and bit into the old man’s neck. His new teeth tore through the skin easily, but when his tongue touched blood, Colin jerked away.
Rancid. Like spoiled milk.
A sound, from above. Colin listened, amused at how acute his hearing had become.
“All right, then. Jake, you go downstairs and mercy-kill the junkie, and then we’ll be off.”
Mercy kill, indeed.
Colin forced himself to be patient, standing stock-still, as the trap door opened and a figure descended.
“Well well well, look who’s up and about. Be brave, I’ll try to make it painless.”
Jake moved forward. Colin almost grinned. Big, sweating, dirty Jake smelled delicious.
“You got some fight left in you, eh?”
Colin lunged.
His speed was unnatural; he was on Jake in an instant. Even more astounding was his strength. Using almost no effort at all, he pulled the larger man to the ground and pinned down his arms.
“What the hell?”
“I’ll try to make it painless,” Colin said.
But from the sound of Jake’s screams, it wasn’t painless at all.
This blood wasn’t rancid. This blood was ecstasy.
Every cell in Colin’s body shuddered with pleasure; an overwhelming rush that dwarfed the feeling of heroin, a full-body orgasm so intense he couldn’t control the moan escaping his throat.
He sucked until Jake stopped moving. Until his stomach distended, the warm liquid sloshing around inside him like a full term embryo.
But he remained hungry.
He raced up the ladder, practically floating on his newfound power. Butts stood at the table, piling dishes into a wooden crate.
“Colin?”
Butts proved delic
ious, too. In a slightly different way. Not as sweet, sort of a Bordeaux to Jake’s Cabernet. Colin’s tongue was a wild thing. He lapped up the blood like a mad dog at a water dish, ravenous.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Colin let Butts drop, whirling to face Willie.
“Good God!”
Willie reached into his vest, removed a small derringer. He fired twice, both shots tearing into Colin’s chest.
There was pain.
But more than pain, there was hunger.
Willie turned to run, but Colin caught him easily.
“I wonder what you’ll taste like,” he whispered in the screaming man’s ear.
Honey mead. The best of the three.
Colin suckled, gulping down the nectar as it pulsed from Willie’s carotid. He gorged himself until one more swallow would have caused him to burst.
Then, in an orgiastic stupor, he stumbled from the house and into the glorious night.
No longer dark and silent and scary, the air now hummed with a bright glow, and animal sounds from miles away were clear and lovely.
Bats, chasing insects. A wolf, baying the moon. A tree toad, calling out to its mate.
Such sweet, wonderful music.
The feeling overwhelmed Colin, and he shuddered and wept. This is what he’d been searching for his entire life. This was euphoria. This was power. This was a fresh start.
“I see you have been busy.”
Colin spun around.
Van Helsing stood at the entrance to the house. His right hand still gripped Colin’s bone knife. His left hand was gone, severed above the wrist where the chain had bound him. The stump dripped gore, jagged white bone poking out.
Colin studied Van Helsing’s face. Still sunken, still anguished. But there was something new in the eyes. A spark.
“Happy, old man? You finally have your freedom.”
“Freedom is not what I seek. I desire only the redemption that comes with death.”
Colin grinned, baring the sharp tips of his new fangs.
“I’ll be happy to kill you, if you want.”
Van Helsing frowned.
“The lineage of nosferatu ends now, Mr. Willoughby. No more may be allowed to live. I have severed the heads of the ones inside the house. Only you and I remain.”
Colin laughed, blood dripping from his lips.
“You mean to kill me? With that tiny knife? Don’t you sense my power, old man? Don’t you see what I have become?” Colin spread out his arms, reaching up into the night. “I have been reborn!”
Colin opened wide, fangs bared to tear flesh. But something in Van Helsing’s face, some awful fusion of hate and determination, made Colin hesitate.
Van Helsing closed the distance between them with supernatural speed, plunging the knife deep into Colin’s heart.
Colin fell, gasping. The agony was exquisite. He tried to speak, and blood—his own rancid blood—bubbled up sour in his throat.
“Not . . . not . . . wood.”
“No, Mr. Willoughby, this is not a wooden stake. It will not kill you. But the damage should be substantial enough to keep you here for an hour or so.”
Van Helsing drove the knife further, puncturing the back of Colin’s rib cage, pinning him to the ground.
“I have been waiting sixty years to end this nightmare, and I am tired. So very tired. With our destruction, my wait shall finally be over. May God have mercy on our souls.”
Colin tried to rise, but the pain brought tears.
Van Helsing rolled off, and sat, cross-legged, on the old cobblestone road. He closed his eyes, his thin, colorless lips forming a serene smile.
“I have not seen a sunrise in sixty years, Mr. Willoughby. I remember them to be very beautiful. This should be the most magnificent of them all.”
Colin began to scream.
When sunrise came, it cleansed like fire.
Zen and the Art of Vampirism
Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong’s best-selling Women of the Otherworld series was launched in 2001 with Bitten, a novel featuring Elena Michaels—an everyday woman who also happens to be the only known female werewolf. Unlike other contemporary fantasy series with female protagonists that mix in mystery and a bit of romance, the Otherworld books didn’t stick with a single lead character (or werewolves or women for that matter). In “Zen and the Art of Vampirism,” we meet Zoe Takano, the only vampire in Toronto—until some southern fangsters decide to take over her territory.But don’t expect the stereotypical from either the author or her vampire.
Armstrong has been telling stories since before she could write. Her earliest written efforts were disastrous. If asked for a story about girls and dolls, hers would invariably feature undead girls and evil dolls, much to her teachers’dismay. All efforts to make her produce “normal” stories failed. Today, she continues to spin tales of ghosts and demons and werewolves, while safely locked away in her basement writing dungeon. Other than the Otherworld paranormal suspense series, she’s authored the Darkest Powers young adult urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She lives in southwestern Ontario with her husband, kids, and far too many pets.
In Miller’s bar, the only thing that smelled worse than the bathroom was the clientele. Of the three humans there that night, two were already so pissed I could walk over, sink my teeth into their necks, and they’d never flinch. Tempting, but Rudy likes me sticking to beer.
Cultural assimilation is a lofty goal, but every minority needs a place to kick back with her own kind, a place to trade news and gossip that wouldn’t interest anyone outside the group. For supernaturals in Toronto, that place is Miller’s.
The clientele wasn’t exclusively supernatural. That kind of thing is hard to enforce without calling attention to yourself, which none of us wants to do. But the ambiance itself is usually enough to discourage outsiders.
Tonight the only sober human was a guy in a suit sitting at the bar, drinking in his surroundings and telling himself that, despite his house in the suburbs and corporate parking spot, he was still a badass. And as long as he was misbehaving, that Japanese girl in the short skirt and knee-high boots looked like just the thing to cap off his evening. I’d already rejected the two drinks he’d sent, but he wasn’t getting the message, not even when I openly eyed the blond half-demon girl at the other end of the bar.
While I’d settle for an introduction to the half-demon, what I really wanted was a job. My rent was due, my bar tab was overdue and if I didn’t get a gig in the next week, I’d be digging through my stash of goodies, looking for something to fence. I suppose I could return my new red leather jacket and matching boots. Or not.
A job, though, might be forthcoming. The bartender Rudy said a guy had come by last night, interested in hiring me. I don’t usually take jobs without referrals, but desperate times . . .
I swore I heard the bells of St. James toll midnight when my guy walked in. If that bit of theatrics didn’t mark him as a first-timer, the way he entered did—slinking through the door, looking around furtively, hands stuffed in his overcoat pockets like a perv getting ready to flash. The overcoat didn’t help. Nor did the rest of the outfit—skin-tight pleather pants, an open-necked shirt and chains. Someone had watched Underworld one too many times.
Rudy said the guy had introduced himself as José. If there was an ounce of Hispanic blood in him, I’d drink cow’s blood for a week. Probably christened Joe, but decided it wasn’t exotic enough for a supernatural.
He made it halfway to the bar before Rudy pointed me out to him. The guy stopped. He looked at me. He looked some more.
Obviously I wasn’t what he expected. Unfortunately, he was exactly what I expected—scruffy, stringy hair, wild eyes. Toronto doesn’t get a lot of new supernaturals and those who do emigrate are usually on the run from trouble south of the border. I only hoped José didn’t want me to fix that trouble for him. I’m a thief, not an assassin, but I’ve had more than one
client imply that it shouldn’t make a difference. Vampires kill; therefore, they should have no compunction about doing it for money.
José walked to my table. “Zoe Takano?”
I motioned to the chair across from me.
“It’s uh, about a job,” he said.
I motioned at the chair again.
His gaze skittered about the bar. “Shouldn’t we, uh, take this outside?”
“Does anyone in here look like an undercover cop?”
He gave a nervous chuckle. “I guess not.”
Actually, the hulking half-demon in the corner was one, but we had an understanding.
“Tell me what you have in mind,” I said. “Just leave out the details until I’ve agreed.”
It was a theft, something about a ring. I didn’t pay much attention because after two lines of his story, I knew there was no job. That’s when he turned to call a drink order to Rudy, and his hair swung off his neck, revealing the ghosts of a half-dozen puncture wounds.
Vamp freak.
Just as there are humans who get off on bloodletting, there are supernaturals who do, too. The difference is that supernaturals don’t need to find someone to play vampire for them. They can get a real one.
In Toronto, there weren’t any vamp freaks. There was no point. I was the only vampire here.
I let José natter on, then set my beer aside. “You’re right. Let’s take this outside.”
He jumped up so fast he set the table wobbling. Rudy stood at the bar, scowling, José’s drink in hand.
“Pay the man,” I said.
José opened his wallet and stared in confusion at the multicolored bills.
“This one’s pretty,” I said, plucking out a red fifty. I handed it to Rudy, mouthing for him to apply the extra to my tab. Then I waved José out of the bar.
I led José to an alley two blocks over. He trailed at my heels even when I said he could walk beside me. Someone had him trained well. I shivered and briefly wondered who.
I got far enough down the alley to be hidden from the street, then turned sharply.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“I’m not interested.”
“In the job? I thought—”
Vampires: The Recent Undead Page 11
