Carol sighed. “I know. I sometimes wonder if I will. I’m almost twenty-seven now.”
“Just a baby. I’m a hundred and twenty-nine, you know.”
“And don’t look a day over a hundred and twenty-eight.”
“Flattery will— Oh, hell.”
Carol followed his line of sight to the mist forming behind her to the left. She turned so that she could keep both Michael and Antoine in her line of sight. The vampire formed quickly, the cloudy spot roiling for only a few seconds before it coalesced.
His handsome, cruel face broke into an ugly smile when he saw Michael sitting on the floor and noted how he rested against the side of a chair as though lacking the strength to push himself upright. Then the smile melted into an unconvincing attempt at sympathy.
“Michael, you look terrible, dear boy.” The concern in his tone didn’t ring any truer than his smile. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” He strolled across the room to stand over the younger man. “It’s so unnecessary.”
“Totally necessary,” Michael said from between clenched teeth. “And forget the fake sympathy. The only thing that concerns you is losing a slave. And maybe losing face before the others because of it.”
Antoine shrugged. “It’s a concern, but not a great one. There are others where you came from. But why are you wasting the gift I gave you?”
“Some kind of gift,” Michael answered bitterly. “A gift I neither sought nor wanted. And not one you gave willingly.”
“A gift nonetheless. Immortality. Who doesn’t want it?”
“At the price of one’s soul? Because you get all those extra lifetimes by stealing them from the people they belonged to?”
“They’re lesser creatures.” Antoine dismissed his victims with a wave of his hand. “We’re superior in every way. Fast, powerful, immortal.”
“And completely immoral. Cowardly, soulless monsters.”
“There’s no reasoning with you, is there, Michael?”
“No.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to let the blood lust do its work. You know that as long as she’s here, you’ll never succeed. At the end you won’t be able to resist. Your will won’t work anymore when the pain and need drive you insane.”
“Only a few more hours to go till dawn. I can manage.”
Antoine shook his head and laughed. It sounded forced. “We’ll see. I think I’ll just hang around to watch for a bit. If it makes you more comfortable, I’ll dematerialize so you won’t even know I’m here.” His form wavered and broke up, going to mist again, then winking out of sight.
“Can you do that?” Carol asked Michael.
He shook his head. “Only true vampires can.”
“Is he gone?”
He struggled to sit up straighter. “Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. I’ve just got to hold on…”
The word trailed off into a choked moan as another convulsion began to shake him. It didn’t last as long this time, but was even more violent, sending his body into a series of contortions after he fell over onto his side. He jerked and thrashed so hard the floor vibrated and the furniture shook. She watched in horror as his body jackknifed into a tight V, his face almost against his knees, and then snapped back to bow in the other direction, slamming him so hard it would have cracked the spine of a normal human being.
Chapter 6
He writhed on the floor for several more minutes, banging into chairs and even rolling perilously close to the fire at one point.
Carol wanted to go to him, especially when he appeared to be in danger of getting toasted, but didn’t dare. So she waited it out, listening to the seconds tick off from the clock in the hall.
After a while, the convulsions seemed to abate, but when he opened his eyes, the red color flickered in them again, then settled to a steady glow. Keeping his gaze fixed on her, he rolled onto his belly and began crawling toward her. Carol made an effort not to look too long into his eyes. It meant raking her gaze quickly down his face and settling in to watch his mouth instead. That wasn’t a thrill either, since his lips formed a vicious, open-mouthed frown that showed way too much teeth. The fangs glittered with an orange-red glow as they reflected the firelight. It reminded her uncomfortably of blood.
Pity turned to horror as she backed away, raising the stake in her right hand and clasping the cross in the other. At least the ravaging effects of the convulsions robbed him of the superhuman speed. It took a painful amount of time to pull himself just a few feet across the carpet.
Worse were the sounds he made. The moans and groans were bad enough. Then he started pleading, his voice thin and whiny, a stark contrast to his usual deep, mellow tones. “I smell you. The blood…red blood. Please. Please! Need…the red blood. Come closer, just a little closer.”
Instead she backed away another step or two, wincing as another convulsion ripped through him, jerking his body like a boneless doll into contortions that had his arms wrapped around his shoulders and legs bending up behind him so far his feet almost reached his neck. Incoherent sounds—some shouts, some cut-off moans and a few pleas—poured out of him until the spasms finally passed and left him sprawled on the floor, arms and legs stuck out at odd angles. Nonetheless, he looked up, the red glow flickering in his eyes, and began to creep in her direction again.
“Michael!” She raised the stake. “Stop. You don’t want to do this. Remember? You want to die human.”
She considered running for the front door, but it was four-thirtyish in the morning, still dark and probably still snowing outside. If this pursuit didn’t stop soon, though, she’d take her chances.
“Michael, please! Remember.”
He halted and stared at her. The red glow flickered a few times, then his entire body went tense and rigid. His eyes closed and his head dropped onto his extended arms. For several long minutes, he lay there. His back heaved up and down five or six times before that slowed along with his breathing.
Finally he rolled over onto his back. When he opened his eyes, the red glow was gone, leaving only the dark blue irises around a black center. He remained still, gathering his strength, for several minutes before he again got to a sitting position. After a glance around, he levered himself up to his feet and staggered back to the leather chair, where he all but collapsed into it.
“I can smell you,” he said. It was more a statement of fact than either warning or plea. He rubbed his hands over his face. If he’d looked ravaged before, he approached being skeletal now. The bones protruded sharply and his eyes had sunk deep into his skull. His skin was the color of raw, unworked clay. Tremors, not huge convulsive ones, but a fine series of quivers, shook him continually. “Probably better you don’t come any closer.” Even the words seemed to be an effort.
“All right. I’ll stay here.”
A series of heavy breaths pumped in and out of him. “It’s— Talk to me again. Say anything. Distract me. Do you have any plans for this Christmas?”
“Nothing special. I’ve got a few tins of cookies in the car. I expect my mom will burn hers again. Of course, my brother claims he’s developed a taste for burnt cookies, but I bet he eats mine first. So will Laura’s kids. We would have had eggnog last night around the fire, but, frankly, I won’t miss that all that much. I’m not sure why everyone likes eggnog so much. Probably that dab of bourbon my dad puts in it. I’d rather just have my bourbon straight.”
“I still have trouble accepting that ladies drink so much now,” he said.
“They did back when you were alive,” she said.
“Not so much.”
“Maybe not. But you think all that cooking wine went into the food? And didn’t they like to have a nip of sherry sometimes?”
“Yes, but that hardly counts.”
“You ever tried sherry?”
“No,” he admitted.
“It packs more punch than you expect.”
“All right. I concede. What else will you do on Chr
istmas? Aside from eat the roast you hope your mother will remember to put in the oven and the pies you hope she manages not to burn too badly.”
“Actually, I’ve got a couple of pies in the back of the car too, but they’re probably frozen by now. And I’ll remind her about the roast. If I get there.”
“You will. What about the morning? Christmas morning?”
“The usual. The kids will wake us all up way too early, probably right about now, in fact, to open their gifts. Paper and ribbons will fly. Boxes get torn open and pieces scattered. Then the adults exchange their gifts, a bit slower, since we don’t all open them at the same time. We go around the room, taking turns opening things to make it last longer and so we can all enjoy each other’s gifts more. Then we’ll have coffee and Laura’s coffee cake, one thing she does really well in the kitchen, before we start working on dinner. Oh, and I forgot, on Christmas Eve--last night, I guess--my dad and Mark, Laura’s husband, were probably sweating putting together that bike they got Matt. Or maybe they got it pre-assembled. I don’t know.”
“You have to put together your bicycles yourselves?”
“You haven’t seen that in any movies? I guess I don’t recall seeing it either, but it’s generally a scene ripe for comedy. Tab A never fits into slot B the way it’s supposed to and sometimes they forget to include part number thirty-four. Or when you fit tab C into slot D, tab A jumps out of slot B. It’s been known to reduce strong, smart men to blobs of blubbering borscht.”
A harsh chuckle interrupted her. “Blubbering borscht? Dare I ask what that is?”
“Um, well, really, I don’t know. Borscht is some kind of Russian soup, I think. But it sounded good, didn’t it?”
His breath heaved in and out as though even the laughter was an exertion that threatened his fragile self-control. And he enjoyed it anyway. “It did.”
“I just made it up. Anyway, a couple of aunts and uncles and cousins will probably come over to join us for dinner. The guys will find some sports thing to watch until dinner, or if the weather’s nice, they’ll go out and throw a ball around themselves. They’ll come in bruised, bleeding and covered in mud and tell us they had a great game, but cousin Andy cheated and moved before the snap. Then we’ll all sit down to eat and stuff ourselves until we’re uncomfortable and go sit around the living room like lead weights for a bit until someone drags out the games. We’ll play cards or something until we’re ready to drop.”
Michael’s fingers dug deep into the leather and an occasional glow of red flickered in his eyes. He tried to watch her as she talked, but had to look away periodically. “It sounds like fun.” He swallowed hard and winced.
“It is…usually. Unless someone gets into an argument. It happens fairly often. I guess we’re kind of a competitive bunch. My brother and a couple of my cousins are especially prone to it. They don’t like to lose—at anything.”
Michael nodded. His face tightened, lips pressing together and lids narrowing. His body was tight with the effort to hold himself in check.
Exhaustion started to make her feel heavy and listless, but she dared not let her alertness fail. She was running out of conversational ideas, however.
“Michael? What would it be like to be a vampire? What would you be doing today if you had…turned already?”
“Tonight, you mean? Most likely I’d be out hunting. A vamp has to feed every few days.”
“Hunting? Finding someone to feed on? How do you decide?”
“Usually you try to find someone who’s out alone at night. Someone who can’t fight back. Or you try to take them by surprise and sink your fangs in before they even know you’re there. It’s generally not hard to find someone out late by themselves, even on Christmas Eve.”
He sighed and shook his head. “According to some of the books I’ve read recently, it’s sort of okay to find criminals and lowlife types to feed from. I don’t buy it. Who set us up as judges of who deserves to die? It’s still stealing a life. And a vampire has to do that every few days. So I’d likely be out searching for some poor lonely soul, walking somewhere on Christmas Eve or looking for a handout or plying their trade or maybe just making last minute deliveries.”
“Couldn’t you feed on animals, like you’ve been doing?”
He shook his head. “Once you’ve drunk human blood, you crave it and nothing else will do.”
“Would you truly be Antoine’s servant? Even after you became a true vamp?”
“Yes. He couldn’t completely control me, but he could exert a strong influence. He already can if I forget and look into his eyes. Like I did that night at the feast.”
“And you’d never be free of him?”
“Until I or someone else disposed of him and took his place.”
The clock chimed five o’clock and they both listened to the five bells toll.
“How could you get rid of him?” Carol asked.
“Staking is the usual way, but if you want to be sure it’s permanent, beheading is better. Or burning. Otherwise, if the stake is removed, the vamp can rise again.”
She shivered. “I think I’m sorry I asked. Can we talk about something more cheerful?”
Michael nodded. A red flicker came and went in his eyes, so quickly she barely saw it. “What do you do for a living?” he asked. “Since you’re not married, I assume you have a job?”
“Yeah, but it’s really not exciting. I’m a junior accountant.”
“Do you like it?”
“Actually, I do. Everyone thinks I’m kind of weird. No one’s supposed to like spending your time buried in numbers and reports. But I like making things add up properly and I like finding hidden meanings in the numbers. They can tell you a lot more than you think.”
“Such as?” he asked.
Pinpoints of red continued to flash off and on in his eyes, but for the most part, the irises remained deep blue. The tension of his body didn’t abate, however, and she could see the effort it cost him to fight the need wracking him. His fingers were about to poke holes in the recliner’s leather arms and his long legs stretched out rigidly. His ankles were crossed and pressed hard against each other. Every now and again he winced, though he tried to suppress it, and an occasional small gasp worked its way past his control.
“You can tell a lot about a company by reading the financial reports closely,” Carol aid. “I once caught an employee of one of our clients embezzling. It wasn’t even all that cleverly done. I’m not sure how he got away with it for as long as he did.”
“How did he do it and get away with it?”
“He was in charge of accounts payable. He and a friend created a dummy company that sent in fake invoices. Of course, the invoices were always for expenses that looked realistic. For a long time nobody questioned them. Until I noticed that the company seemed to be spending a great deal more than usual on fuel. It was a trucking company and, of course, they used a lot of it, so an increase of a few percentage points didn’t really register with them, though it meant quite a nice bit of cash for the perpetrators.”
“Why wasn’t that clever?”
“Most companies try to stay on top of costs and keep them as low as possible. If anyone had taken the trouble to look at fuel costs, they’d have seen right away something was out of line. Apparently no one did, though, until I called their attention to it.”
“How often do things like that happen?”
Carol shrugged. “Not that often really. Most of what I find that’s out of whack is the result of honest mis—“ She broke off when Michael started to shake again.
Moments later, he lay on the floor, writhing and twisting. Teeth snapped together like castanets as he shook, while incoherent moans escaped him to rasp along her nerves.
She hadn’t thought anything could be worse than the last episode, but this one was. For a few minutes, he thrashed around so hard he knocked over an end table and threatened several others. His body bent into positions the human frame wasn’t meant to attain. All
the while he grunted and gasped.
How aware was he of what was happening to him? The sounds he made were almost animal-like and the spasms clearly out of his control, but when he opened his eyes, there were shreds of consciousness alternating with the red glow that indicated his vampire hunger taking control.
Helpless pity made her stomach twist into a knot. Anger joined it as the spasms continued and his grunts grew into louder groans. If Antoine had shown up right then, she probably would have tried to stake him on the spot.
Then Michael started screaming. He tried to suppress it. But even his strong will couldn’t hold them all back. They sometimes emerged as hideous gurgling sounds and sometimes as anguished shrieks.
She couldn’t bear it. That wrenching expression of sheer agony cut into her like a knife, shredding her nerves and twisting her heart. Tears burned her eyes and left hot tracks down her cheeks.
Carol raised the stake she held. Mercy demanded she put him out of the horrible suffering. No one should have to bear pain like this.
She didn’t drive it into him.
He didn’t want that mercy. Her arm sank down to her side again, though she kept the stake ready should he move to attack her. She had no right to put him out his misery just because she couldn’t bear it. If he could stand it, so could she.
After ten long minutes, the screams and the writhing died down. He lay quietly on his side, chest heaving.
The fire popped while she waited for him to move. The flames were dying down too, so she went over to put another log on it, giving wide berth to the area where he sprawled. She didn’t risk moving her gaze off him for more than a second or two as she took pieces of wood from the bin and tossed them on the fire. A small bucket nearby held pines cones. Carol threw in a couple of those and drew in the fresh, outdoorsy scent they emitted as the flames swallowed them.
After a few more minutes, he rolled to his side and looked up at her. No red glow filled his eyes, just sheer mute agony.
It hurt that she couldn’t do anything to ease him. Couldn’t even sit with him and hold his hand. It hurt so badly that she felt it churning away in her stomach.
A Vampire's Christmas Carol Page 6
