“You ain’t one of them, are you? I can’t see in,” the Deathwalker rattled without attempting to turn toward Kasper.
“No. I’m not one of them. But neither am I one of you.”
The Deathwalker rolled onto his back, and Kasper saw that his belly had been torn open. The bloodied edges of the gaping wound were dried dark brown and were as stiff as old leather. Inside, blood had jellied, as black and thick as tar. Intestine looped out over the ribs, onto the sandy pavement, shriveled and blue-white like dead eels. Looking more closely, Kasper saw the man was not simply lying in a twisted position. The lower half of his body was actually facing opposite of the upper half.
Kasper moved back, not wanting to have the nasty flesh touch his boots. The end of the Deathwalker’s shrunken penis had been ripped off, leaving only a crusty stump. The meaty parts of his thighs and buttocks bore grooves and finger-gouges. Dried muscle, and in some places, bone, lay exposed to the cool night.
“Wait until you get to this point,” the man hissed at Kasper. His teeth were stained with old blood, his mouth as dry as a hole in sand. His eyes rolled up toward the dark sky, not focusing on Kasper, or anything else, for long.
“How long have you been here?” Kasper asked. He stepped around the man’s body, surveying the self-induced damage. Could he ever become so wretched? No. No, he had his gun. As long as he retained an ounce of sanity, he would end things before he coveted his own flesh and blood.
“How long?” the Deathwalker mused, his voice as weightless as a balloon. “How long has the sun shone? How long has the moon rained silver? How long have men craved a taste of blood just to get through the night?”
“You haven’t been here forever.” Kasper chuckled.
“No. But, it feels as though I have, you know. Hit by a trash truck. It was warmer then.”
Kasper licked his lips. He was surprised by the length of time this creature thought he had been here, between the line of death and whatever the hell he was right now. “Warmer? Summer?”
“Yes. I’ve been lucky, if you can call it that, to lie in the shadow of these buildings. The sun never quite kisses my skin. And the rats are sweet, I’ve learned.” He rose up on the twigs of his arms and grinned at Kasper. “How sweet are you, my dear?”
“Not very, I assure you,” Kasper snarled. He shoved the disgusting Deathwalker backward with the toe of his boot. The man rolled clumsily, like so much dried kindling, his brittle bones splintering. The bastard smelled awful, putrid as death. Kasper breathed through his mouth to avoid the odor.
“It’s an atrocity to outlive your usefulness,” the Deathwalker said, pushing himself back up onto one elbow. His scrawny, pitted ass lay exposed, filthy and raw.
“I’m sure,” Kasper agreed.
The Deathwalker plunged his hand into the cavern of his belly and brought out a length of ropy, dry intestine. He tore into it with his teeth and chewed slowly, noisily. “Eating your own flesh gets old, you know.”
Suddenly, the man lunged. He locked his bony fingers around the ankle of Kasper’s boot. “You’re what I need!”
He grinned, exposing his foul teeth. Kasper jumped back, his heart leaping almost painfully against the housing of his ribs. Shaking, he removed his gun from his coat and pressed the barrel against the man’s forehead.
“You monster,” he whispered as he squeezed the trigger and sprayed brains all over the empty lot.
***
Devin’s hands were cold and shoving them down deep into the pockets of his coat did not help. Kasper was just around the corner, torturing some poor bastard. Devin was not looking for him anyway, despite his claims of setting out to stop him. Going through the motions, that was what he was doing. He looked bad to everyone, now—John, the other Deathwalkers, Susan. Sure, she thought she was hiding it from him, and at least she tried to. The rest—to hell with them. Maybe she understood. He was afraid.
With Kasper only a dozen feet away, all he felt was sick. He could not kill the tormentor. Right now, he was too afraid to even move. He clenched his cold, numb fingers into fists inside his jacket. Had he always been so weak?
He wanted to go back home, climb into the bed and press himself against Susan’s warm back in the warm safety of the covers. They could wait for the world to end.
Last night, he had dreamed of the sun on the back of his neck.
The night was cold, yet he was sweating. For an instant, he imagined simply stepping around the corner and presenting himself to Kasper, his arms outstretched and his head back. It would be done, and maybe that would be the best thing for anyone involved.
Too fucking afraid of that, too.
Devin closed his eyes, and he was back in ’41, Kasper's arms wrapped tight around his waist, his breath hot on the side of his face. Devin had been so afraid. So afraid. Finally, he had pretended to love Kasper, and maybe that was the worst thing he could have done, that and transforming him. There was nothing he could do to make up for the things he had done. Betrayal cut deeper than anything he could think of.
The sharp clap of a gunshot startled him from his thoughts, and he almost cried out. He clamped his hand over his mouth and chanced a glance around the building. Kasper stood over the remains of a nude, broken man. His gun was relaxed at his side and pointed toward the ground. Smoke rose from the barrel like wisps of gray breath. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the cold air.
How did Susan manage to escape this fiend?
Devin turned away from the horrible scene and rested his head against the brick wall. His hands shook, and his knees trembled. He clenched his jaw to stop the chattering of his teeth.
Susan, her face blue with bruises. The blood on her thighs. Could he allow Kasper to get away with it? Could he? He took a deep breath and blew it out through his gritted teeth. It would be better if they just left Charlestowne. He was no match for Kasper. He and John could return to Europe; Susan had already suggested leaving, so convincing her would not be an issue.
Despite what he had told her before, he would chose to run away again, just as he always had.
chapter forty-nine
1946.
People were wise to board the windows against creatures like him. Loathsome things, humans. And Kasper? Just as loathsome, he supposed, with his pronounced incisors and a hunger for warm blood as big as the world.
Others like him ran in packs like wolves, but Kasper preferred being alone. He hated the Deathwalkers—maybe even more now that he had transformed.
Of course, he was not the only creature from whom the country folk hid. In the months following the end of the second Great War, there were also thieves and marauders to worry over. Little food. Little work. Little money. Those were the things that turned good people bad.
However, there were still decent people to be found, sympathetic, neighborly souls who would do kind deeds, even when it landed them in the grave. So, when Kasper beat on the door of the little farm house just as dusk spread its black cape across the countryside, he knew he would draw an answer and a kindly nod, followed by an invitation to come inside where the fire was warm and the food was scant, but readily shared.
Although he was new to it, Kasper knew the game well enough. Besides, rumors of prowling things thirsty for blood along the dead, brown winter hills had spread like polio. He dirtied his cheeks and clothing with mud, mussed his hair, and pulled a terrified face when the bolt of the door grinded back, and a wary eye peered through a small opening in the door.
“Please. They’re after me.” It was only a breath before the door opened wider, revealing a ruddy-faced, middle-aged man.
“Sir. Something has been trailing me for over a mile. I fear it is one of the creatures that has taken some of the others out this far. I fled, but I cannot go on,” Kasper rasped.
The man stepped aside, his round stomach leaving little room in the doorway. “Come inside. Quickly.”
He led Kasper into a dining room, which was quite small, but tidy, and gestured towar
d an empty chair at the table. A fire roared and crackled brightly.
The ruddy-face man, who introduced himself as Arthur, asked, “So, did they see which way you headed? Have you led them here?”
“N-no. They did not see. I doubled back. They may have lost my scent, but I am too exhausted to go on.” Kasper spoke slowly in an effort to thoroughly disguise his German accent. Germans were not exactly welcome visitors in respectable homes.
There was a scant table set for supper—a steaming bowl of greens, a small bird, pale mash. A woman, just as ruddy and plump as Arthur, stood with her brow creased in concern. She patted Kasper’s shoulder tenderly.
“Eat. Then rest until light. We have the room.”
Kasper shook his head. “I cannot impose.”
“No imposition,” Arthur insisted. He nodded to his wife, and she disappeared into the kitchen, then returned shortly with another plate. Trailing behind her was a willowy beauty with a halo of flaming curls.
Arthur sat down at the head of the wobbly butcher block table. “My wife, Ruthie and our daughter, Lexi. Lexi is deaf and dumb, as they say.” The man’s face brightened whenever he looked at the girl until he was almost handsome. “But she’s not dumb. Can’t talk, but she understands—reads lips some. Can write. See that board on the table there? That’s her way of talking.”
Kasper smiled. Of his newly acquired vampire powers, he had discovered that he could pick up on others’ thoughts quite easily. Of course, this took his complete concentration, and he had not yet had the opportunity to rest with these people. The time would soon come, and pretty Lexi would become an open book to him, despite her infirmity.
The place smelled of burning oak and roasted pork. How Kasper missed enjoying real food. He forced himself to taste it and made a good showing of hunger when Ruthie placed the steaming plate in front of him.
After what seemed a long supper of food he could not eat and substandard wine that made his stomach churn, Kasper was asked to join the family in the parlor to smoke. The place was as cozy as granny’s house from a fairy tale. Doilies were placed beneath lamps that were not used. “’Lectricity’s been off since before the war ended” Ruthie explained. She admitted she quite liked the candles, but for the difficulty it created when she did her sewing. Kasper smiled and nodded as kindly as he could muster.
Neither Arthur nor Ruthie could stop yammering long enough to allow him to climb into their minds, not that there would be a lot there. What poured forth from people’s lips was usually bullshit, he had determined long ago. Within the abyss of the mind was truth.
He sat before the fire basking in Ruthie’s genuine hospitality and Arthur’s showing of generosity that was growing less and less ostentatious as the minutes passed. Smoking the man’s pathetic hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking the remnants of his brandy that was much better than his wine, Kasper finally glimpsed inside their dull minds.
Ruthie was simple enough. Done fluttering about, doting on Kasper’s every request, she now settled on the end of the couch with a tattered pair of Arthur’s trousers. “I don’t know how you wear these things out so quickly,” she muttered, not unkindly. Kasper was in her head quickly, thoughts that were as fickle as a baby’s—were those monsters still out on the hillside? Had Lexi taken notice of the handsome stranger, and what would it matter since she couldn’t hear? Would there be enough eggs if their guest stayed for another meal?
It quickly became boring, and Kasper focused on Arthur. Getting inside the man’s head was a little trickier. It was a dark place. Arthur furrowed his brow tightly, as if he felt something as Kasper zeroed in, as if he actually sensed Kasper entering his thoughts. Of course, that was impossible. Nevertheless, Arthur glowered at him through the swirling gray smoke.
The man was not happy about him being there; that was clear. The fat man’s thoughts were clouded with jealousy and possessiveness. But none of this was over Ruthie’s actions. Instead, he was worried over his pretty daughter. It had not escaped his notice that Lexi had watched Kasper all through dinner. He did not care for the looks that came through the raven lashes of his silent child.
It had also not escaped Arthur’s notice that Kasper had not attempted to hide his interest in her.
Uglier images then surfaced—Arthur’s hands on his daughter’s slim waist, his breath in her hair. He liked that she could not scream or cry out. He went to her bed several times a week, and he planned to do so tonight, if he could only get the panhandling stranger out of his hair and out of his house.
***
Lexi was fortunate not to have to hear the carnage that echoed down the hollow hallway as Kasper devoured Arthur and Ruthie. Maybe it was the pleasure of killing the two without the need to quiet them. Perhaps it was the screams that pushed him on. But even in the pleasure of Ruthie’s pleading cries and Arthur’s curses, he finally ripped open their stout, sweaty throats in the end, to cut the screams and to bathe in the font of blood from a breached internal jugular that he had come to quickly love.
Ruthie passed quickly and without very much struggle. Her eyes grew wide with fright, but it was mixed with a kind of resignation. “Don’t hurt my child,” she mouthed through a spurt of blood.
Arthur was too ignorant to realize that he was dead. He stumbled around their bedroom, his air hissing from his neck like a punctured tire. He sprayed hot blood onto the dingy beige walls until his body was truly spent of breath and blood. Finally, he collapsed on the floor, the tattered hand-woven carpet absorbing his blood and piss like a sponge. His head fell into the fireplace, across the smoldering embers, sending up a tiny storm of fiery ash.
Shortly, the bedroom smelled not only of charred pork, just as the kitchen had downstairs, but also shit and warm, heavy das Herzblut—heart’s blood.
Kasper moved to Lexi’s bedroom. He stood over her and watched her peace as she slept. Her flaming curls spread out onto her pillow like waves of coppery silk.
He contemplated killing her, but found he could not bring himself to do it. The girl was simply too lovely. He would keep her instead.
Like a ghoul bathed in the blood of her parents, Kasper remained motionless in the wide path of silvery moonlight that came through the window. On her night table, she had an electric lamp, useless, but there was also a short, fat candle, almost melted away. Beneath the edge of her covers, where one small, pale hand rested, was a well-loved volume—Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Without delving into Lexi’s mind, Kasper knew these pages were forbidden and a secret pleasure of the young woman hidden from the prudish eyes of her hypocritical father.
Kasper returned to the other bedroom. He cleaned up Arthur’s and Ruthie’s remains and disposed of them in a far smattering of woods at the edge of a field overtaken with brambles and vines. He also threw out the blood-caked carpets, bedcovers, drapes and whatever else he found that could not be wiped clean of blood. Then, he cleaned the blood from the floor and walls as best he could. He did not want to expose the girl to the horror. She did not deserve to have her thoughts plagued with such things.
Face and hands clean, he returned to the girl’s room before the sun touched the sky and drew her drapes tightly across the window. Then, he climbed into her bed, naked, and snuggled to her, the warmth radiating from her through her thin cotton gown. She stirred, her brow furrowing and then rising. She expected her father and was surprised to find Kasper.
She did not protest his presence.
***
For three days and nights, he gently fed from Lexi’s throat. They made love. Kasper delighted in her abandon and the fact that there was something like relief in her face and in her thoughts when he explained that her mother and father were no longer alive. She showed no remorse.
When she found she no longer needed the burden of her slate and chalk to communicate, she blossomed. Her thoughts opened to Kasper. He had found one who would not abandon him as Devin had. Lexi could not profess her love, and then leave him. She could not lie. For this reason, he
made her his.
Kasper declined to transform her. To do that would close her mind to him.
He was fully aware of the effects of a Deathwalker’s bite. The more he fed from Lexi’s blood, the slower her aging process became. She could essentially remain young and beautiful forever.
Once the word spread that something had murdered her family, Kasper helped Lexi gather the things she wished to keep. In her old man’s ramshackle truck, they vanished into the night.
Lexi never questioned what he was.
Years later, she would lament over the lack of a child. He gave her a stolen boy baby as a gift, and she was as whole as any mother would be.
They were as whole as any family could be. All that separated them from normal, human families was his determination to find creatures like Devin McCree and rid the world of them. He was an exterminator of pest and vermin. He provided a service to the world. Liberating the world of contemptible beasts like McCree was the most important thing he could ever do.
chapter fifty
“Michael.”
Susan approached him as silently as a ghost as he was making a fire from the last of the old barstool pieces and a couple of branches of driftwood he discovered on the beach earlier. He started and straightened up.
“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” he whispered, but seeing her, his face lit up.
They sank into each other’s arms. Familiar feelings flooded back suddenly, before the pregnancy, before Devin’s return, before she stopped being human. For this moment, it seemed right. It felt good. Safe. Of course, that sense of safety never lasted more than a few moments.
He pressed his face into the curve of her shoulder and sighed as she stroked his soft hair.
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