Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

  "Are you protecting your mother as well?"

  More mental damning. I hadn't meant to let that slip out. Unhappily, I had to concede that I was protecting her too. It was one thing to threaten her in defence of my sister. It was entirely another to give her up to a professional psychopath.

  "My mother is dead," I said darkly, which was sort of true, "And I wish you were too." That was an outright lie, but I was furious and scared.

  Evan drew a deep, unsteady breath. "I don't know what to do with you, Lissa."

  "You can let me go." So I don't have to look at you and keep hurting.

  Sorrow passed fleetingly over his stark features. "I can't. Not yet. Not until I know everything you know about them."

  "I hate you." I thought perhaps if I said it, it would be true. I should hate him now. It would be more convenient if I could.

  "I'm sure you do. Abe, help me tie her up." He was all stoic detachment once more.

  Abe shoved me into a kitchen chair. I bucked. He held me down while Evan rummaged in the little suitcase. He emerged with a length of plastic washing line, which he wound around my wrists and then my ankles. I thought about screaming for help, and then about being gagged again, and remained silent. My head was throbbing and I felt queasy.

  Back into the bag for Evan, and he brought out three things that made me, finally, really frightened. A sharp knife, a box of syringes and a bottle of opaque liquid. He opened the bottle, dipped the first empty, uncapped syringe into it and drew out a full measure of liquid.

  My heart was hammering while I watched him put the full syringe on the table and fill a second one.

  "Get Lissa a glass of water, Abe. Help her to drink it."

  Abe obeyed, and I watched while Evan filled each of the five needles in turn. That left the bottle empty. The last syringe he held up to the light, checking its level. Then he looked at me.

  "No. Don't. Don't you put. That filthy stuff. In. Me." My voice was hitching with terror, "That. Killed. Paul. Please. Don't. Don't."

  "This isn't for you," said Evan reassuringly, as though it was wrong to think he could do such an abominable thing.

  Abe held the glass of water to my mouth. I turned aside, spilling it down my face and shirt. I had no idea what he might have put in it. I was thirsty, but didn't dare drink. I wanted to cry, but didn't want them to see me do it. I wanted to shout, but I didn't want to be gagged again. I wanted to go home. I wanted it so hard I was shivering.

  "Who is it for, then?" I rasped out, "What is it?"

  "Home-bake heroin, though I think you've worked that out already. Some other stuff as well. Mostly heroin. Their physiology reacts badly to it. It doesn't kill them, of course, but it weakens them." While he spoke, Evan drew another empty syringe from the box, rolled up his sleeve and carefully slid the tip of the needle into the muscle of his left forearm.

  "That's why they don't like drinking from humans who use drugs," he continued. "It doesn't merely taste bad, or render the experience less effective." Dexterously, he pulled the plunger back with one hand and the syringe slowly filled with blood. "Even filtered through a human body, most drugs are debilitating to their metabolism."

  When the syringe was full he carefully pulled it out and pressed his thumb briefly over the pinprick wound. "Heroin's the most effective drug we've found. The purer the better. The trick is getting close enough to inject it."

  He squirted the syringe of blood into a small jar, and then methodically dipped each heroin-filled syringe into it to draw a little blood into the tube. The liquids combined to a flushed pink.

  "It's quite kind, really," he continued, "You saw how quickly we work. A shot of this. A stab to the heart. Burning. It's not about making them suffer." He finished capping the syringes.

  "What's that for? The blood?"

  Evan showed a gleam of interest - perhaps at the notion that I could still be curious about what he was up to while simultaneously frightened for my life.

  "Their bodies can resist foreign matter generally speaking, but not blood. We haven't been able to identify the constituent elements of vampire blood yet, although we know it metabolises human haemoglobin to replicate itself. A little blood in the heroin acts like a kind of Trojan Horse, and guarantees the drug metabolises quickly. Otherwise it tends to seep out of the puncture wound before much harm is done."

  Evan was obviously appreciating the opportunity to expound - maybe so he wouldn't have to think about what he was supposed to do with me now.

  "As far as we've been able to determine, recent blood intake speeds up the few metabolic processes they have. Those processes make their skin tougher over time. That's also why they become stronger and faster, incrementally. It's ironic that they drink blood to make them feel more human. The act is what takes them further away from their humanity and renders them more alien."

  It was the most eloquent I had ever heard him. Seriously, he and Gary might have got on like a house on fire with regard to matters vampiric, if the son of a bitch wasn't so hell bent on murder. Evan's knowledge also raised serious questions about its source.

  "So how did you work all this out, then?" I knew I wouldn't like the answer.

  Evan's expression was surprisingly sheepish. Abe responded. "I subject myself to the genius and mercy of my companions, for the sake of God's work." His tone was proud and defiant.

  "You let them experiment on you?"

  "The damned are not so easy to capture and hold for the purpose," Abe explained scornfully before tilting his head thoughtfully. "Although it has been achieved. My cousin William learned much about the amount of flesh a vampire can lose before it dies. Did he not, Evan?"

  Evan looked grim and I felt ill as I realised what this implied.

  "A lot of awful things were done in the early days while our family learned how to survive," said Evan with a hint of apology. "It's better now, isn't it Abe? More humane."

  "Yes." Abe agreed, "My father Samuel died killing for the Lord. And my uncle. Many nephews and their grandsons. Evan's father has lived longer than any of them. Long enough to pass the mantle to his sons. Perhaps even to his grandson."

  "Yes, well, that's enough Abe."

  "Aye, sir."

  Evan gave Abe a wounded look, then snatched up the empty bottles and took them to the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of powder, a plastic container of filtered water and a clean jar. The knife he left on the table. I tried not to think about why by thinking about Abe instead.

  A family heirloom, Evan had said. I looked at Abe.

  "How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

  "My father made me the instrument of his holy work in Salem in the Year of Our Lord seventeen hundred and three." He recited it as though it was well-worn scripture, unmoved. The same was not true for me. The implications were horrific. Abe looked like a teenage boy.

  "How old were you?"

  "In my seventeenth year," said Abe, with that tinge of pride again, as though this made him special in some unspeakable way.

  I wondered if Evan thought it was such a marvellous thing, and found him watching Abe with sad gravitas. "Half his family had been killed by vampires," he said, "On the trek across the country to Salem."

  "We were hunted," agreed Abe, "And when my grandparents and aunt and uncle and their children were dead, and then my sister and my mother, my father prayed for guidance. God told him to use the devil to fight the devil. My brother offered his life in sacrifice, and waited in the night for the hunter and begged to be made eternal." His eyes were on mine, curious for my response, "He did not have faith, and he died."

  "So your father made you go." What kind of man did that to his son? The thought was there and gone. The kind of man who has lost everything else, and has to find a way to fight back.

  "I chose God's path," Abe scowled. Of course he did. Even at 17 years old, he had chosen to fight his own way.

  "That's… a tragedy," I murmured aloud.

  "The hardest day is the first," said Abe,
subsiding into habitual detachment, "learning to be dead."

  I couldn't bear to look at him anymore, so I turned to Evan. His expression almost made me turn from him too.

  "How about you, Evan? Why are you doing this? Make me understand it."

  His expression was unfathomable. Stone.

  "There must be a reason," I insisted. "Generation after generation of you doing this thing. Why?"

  "Look at him," said Evan, with a curt nod at Abe. "Look at him. Every generation of us has grown up knowing vampires exist. They are out there, killing innocent people. Killing our family. How could we see Abe, knowing what he is and why he was made, and not do this?" The stone in his expression had crumbled and his eyes were haunted.

  "I grew up knowing evil is real," he continued. "It's not an abstract concept. My own grandfather was murdered just before I was born. Of course we do this, Lissa. Anything else would be a betrayal of everything Abe lost and sacrificed, and everything my family has lost and sacrificed since then."

  That being the case, how could they ever stop? If I hadn't been so angry with him, it would have been unbearably sad. "Not all of them are evil. They're mostly pretty horrible, but they don't kill the way they used to. Things have changed in 300 years, surely. You don't have to keep doing this."

  The look in his eyes was almost enough to make me forgive him. Despair, longing and a brief flare of hope that died in a moment, leaving his eyes more desolate than before. "I had a brother once," Evan said.

  "You have a son to carry on our mission," Abe said, an edge to his voice. "And that is all that matters."

  "That's enough, Abe," said Evan harshly. He had reassembled the stone veneer over his expression. Addressing me, he said: "By the way, I wouldn't expect your friend Gary to get you out of here, even if he knew where you were. I rent this place for a reason. He'll need an invitation to get in. And you won't be giving him one." He handed Abe the damp cloth that he'd just retrieved from the kitchen. Abe took it from him.

  "Don't. Please. I'll suffoc…" He stuffed it in my mouth, mid-word and then pulled the tattered strip of shirt over my chin and across my face again, wedging the gag in place.

  "Sorry," said Evan, sounding it, "I have to take precautions."

  Attempting not to hyperventilate while gagged and being held hostage requires a lot of concentration. My sole focus for a while was to not panic. I made myself breathe slowly and steadily through my nose. Whenever I stopped focusing, I thought of Kate or Gary and panic threatened again.

  Consequently, several minutes passed before I regained sufficient equilibrium to realise that Abe and Evan were talking.

  "You swore," Abe was saying.

  "I said maybe."

  "It never ends."

  "No, it doesn't."

  "Perhaps Nathan will fulfil your oath."

  "Leave my son out of it."

  "Only you can do that."

  "Shut up." Evan's pale skin was flushed. I kept my head down, but peered at him, wondering what they were fighting about.

  "Why did we come here?" Abe's tone was almost resigned, though a hint of defiance coloured the demand.

  "You know why. Those newspaper reports."

  "Your father made you come, for he is too old to travel so great a distance now." There was no reply. "And there is the mission."

  "Yes, the mission." Evan scowled.

  "Or did you come to spare your son the mission in his turn?"

  "And why shouldn't I?" Evan all but shouted. "He should have a life."

  "Like the life your brother Miles did not have? The one you do not have?" Silence again. "And I?"

  "You don't have a life, Abe. You're dead. Like Miles."

  "Not like Miles. Miles's back was broken and all his blood sucked out."

  Evan glared, and Abe sank back against the wall, a 300-year-old boy, defeated.

  Evan seemed to think he'd gone too far. "The work redeems you, Abe. It redeems my father. And me."

  "I do not believe that any more." Abe's voice had sunk almost too low to hear.

  Evan didn't move.

  "I have never seen God," Abe continued quietly. "I have never seen Lucifer. Only men, and what men choose to become."

  "Don't say that," Evan's voice shook, "What we've done with your life isn't meaningless."

  Abe lifted his head to look coldly at his partner. "Mine is not a life. I am dead. You have told me so."

  "Abe, don't. We have to make it mean something. Otherwise Miles and everyone before him, including you, died for nothing."

  "What can it mean, if it never ends?"

  Evan shook his head. "You don't understand."

  "You dare?" For the first time, Abe was stirred. His tone was filled with contempt and bitterness. "Your father has carried this mantle for 30 years; and I, for 300. You have carried it mere months. I know the holy mission my father chose for me, and that I chose for myself."

  "I didn't mean that."

  "You do not want to save your son," said Abe darkly, "You want to save yourself."

  With my usual impeccable timing, I started to choke. Despite the initial dampness of the cloth, it was drying out my mouth. I'd been trying to push the wad of material further forward with my tongue. Instead I'd shifted the tail end of it and it had fallen back into my throat.

  Suffocating to death is not painless. It is filled with raw panic and terror. I thought I would die in the moments it took Evan to realise I was not simply making trouble; was sure of it in the longer moments it took for him to untie the strip of cloth and pluck the wad from between my teeth. I sat there, tears streaming down my face, panting frantically for air, too shaken to be anything but grateful I could breathe again.

  "Get her some water," Evan told Abe. The boy disappeared briefly into the kitchen. This time when he held the glass to my lips, I drank so eagerly I inhaled some of it and dissolved into a coughing fit, still trying to drag air into my lungs.

  At this inopportune moment, someone knocked on the door.

  Evan swore and tried to tie the cloth around my face again. I surged away from him, as far as I could while tied to a chair, still wracked with respiratory paroxysms.

  "Get her out of here. Keep her quiet."

  Abe clamped a hand over my mouth and started dragging me, chair and all, towards the corridor. I twisted ineffectually, labouring to break free, make a noise, anything that would alert the visitor to my presence. The plastic-coated cord binding me slipped down the legs of the half-raised chair, freeing my feet at least. I bucked harder, trying to make him let go, but he held fast.

  Evan had paused by the door, ready to check if it was an inconvenient religious doorknocker or an even less-convenient enemy, so that when the solid wooden door burst open, he was perfectly placed to be smashed in the head with it.

  I wished I could have enjoyed it more - the solid thunk, the yell of pain, the crash as Evan fell to the floor while the door banged open against the wall - but I was thoroughly distracted by the man standing in the doorway.

  Gary.

  "Let her go."

  He wasn't as glib as Errol Flynn but those three words were more than enough for hope to leap up in my chest. Then plummet.

  Gary was stuck outside, and with Abe's hand still squashing my mouth shut I couldn't issue the vital invitation to get the hell in here and rescue me.

  With surprisingly quick wit, Gary circumvented this limitation by reaching through the open doorframe and seizing Evan by the leg. He gave a savage pull and dragged him closer until he could grab Evan by the throat. Evan kicked, but he was no match for Gary's strength. Gary moved so quickly, too, that he had Evan upright, pinned to the door frame with a single hand, before Abe, with his hands full of keeping me quiet, could do more than call out.

  I'd never seen Gary look so angry. I didn't know he was capable of it. His expression was utterly stony except for his bared, pointed teeth.

  Even though I knew that expression wasn't for me, it scared me. It also gave me hope again.r />
  "Untie her," Gary said. I'd never heard him sound so cold before, either.

  Abe didn't move, so Gary squeezed Evan's throat a fraction.

  Evan, struggling for breath, scratched futilely at Gary's hand, his eyes rolling frantically in Abe's direction. I wanted to yell at Gary to stop, but couldn't.

  "Now!" Gary demanded.

  His hand still over my mouth, Abe set the chair down and, one-handed, loosened the binding on my wrists. I pulled my hands free and rubbed the red indentations, restoring circulation. Hands and feet were free, but I knew how much faster and stronger Abe was than me, and he hadn't let me go yet.

  "I said," Gary squeezed Evan's throat, "let - her - go!"

  Evan's face was going dark red, and a whimper in my throat betrayed my sympathy. I was torn between wanting Gary to not hurt him, and being angry with Evan for putting all of us in this situation to begin with.

  Abe maintained his position. I could hear a smug challenge in his voice.

  "If you kill him I will break her neck."

  Evan's feet were off the floor and he was kicking feebly. Gary's countenance became more fierce. "I'll tear your heart out if you touch her."

  "Only if you can reach me," jeered Abe. "And you cannot. You are an unholy thing and you may not enter without invitation."

  Gary's eyes narrowed, and then he looked at me, and his ferocity dropped away to something less angry, but no less determined.

  He stepped into Evan's house.

  Gripped by a violent shudder, worse than his characteristic crossing-the-threshold-uninvited quake, his grip on Evan faltered.

  The hunter collapsed to the floor, gasping. His green eyes had rolled up to look at Gary. I couldn't tell if he was horrified or awed.

  Abe was definitely horrified.

  Bellowing denial, Abe let go of me, and I fell painfully to the floor. When I'd righted myself, I saw that Abe had grabbed the knife from the dining room table and was plunging towards Gary. I screamed warning, but Gary had recovered sufficiently to hold up his hands in preparation.