'She's gone,' he told Danica, and scrambled to Kala.
'For now,' Danica said.
'Kala?' He felt for her pulse. 'Still alive.' He looked at Danica where she pulled up behind him in a flurry of pebbles, a nearby vine tearing at her cloak. She pulled at it angrily and adjusted for maximum shade.
'Can you help her?' he asked.
'She's too badly hurt to heal. Only one of us could come back from that sort of injury.'
'I don't know if she'd want that.'
'I am the last person to advise on who to save, if saving is the right word. You knew her best. It's your decision.'
'Kala? Kala? What should I do?'
Breathing so thin, so soft, her bloodstained chest barely rising. In her fist, his pendant, clutched so tight he was afraid to open her fingers to take it. Holding on, he thought. She's holding on. To me. He opened a fresh cut on her arm with his dagger and fed, taking her into him in small, careful slurps. He had to fight to keep his hunger at bay. Danica's powerful blood had got him up and moving, but he was badly hurt. He needed more.
'She must have a foot in both worlds,' Danica cautioned. 'Not too little, not too much.'
He felt Kala's life, its myriad joys and pains, felt her energy fading. Heard the birds so loud, the crows raucous and echoing; he wanted to swear at them, but his mouth was filled with her blood, his lips were sealed to her flesh, his teeth buried in her. She faltered. Her heartbeat losing rhythm, striving, striving, then failing.
He bled for her. Willed her to live. Live.
In the corner of his vision, he saw Danica nod. 'The seed has taken. You've done well.'
Kevin collapsed, exhausted.
'We need to get her out of the sunlight. The Rover's too far away, more's the pity: we could use the decant. She'll be hungry when she wakes, too.'
'I got nothin' left,' he said. 'Let me at least bind these wounds. She's bled enough.'
Scratches. This is heavier kadaicha. All the way to the soul.
He opened the first-aid kit he'd taken from Hunter. Bandages, but nowhere near enough, and two vials, metal, stoppered. He opened them cautiously. Blood. The scent thickened, achingly familiar. Mira's blood, stale but unmistakable. Emergency rations for her Favourite.
'Not for her,' Danica said, a restraining hand on his shoulder. 'Not while she's in the change. Yours and yours alone.'
He drained the vials. And saw, as through a fog:
Mira stumbling through the bush
Huddled under her coat
Desperation and panic driving her as the sun lashed her
Still running. Good.
He shut her out.
He had to get Kala to safety, and then he had to go home. Home to bury his mother. To work out what he was going to do next. He looked at Kala, bruised and bloodied and bandaged, one foot in death and one in the unlife, the half life. Would she thank him or curse him?
They had to go the long way, clambering like drunks back up the ridge and across to the cave. Handprints in white and ochre, outlines of kangaroos and more obscure animals, decorated the walls. He retrieved Cassie's body - so horrible, carrying her severed head, those eyes and the dust and the blood, her lips open in a sigh, a glimpse of tongue. It was a relief to cover her with his shirt then crawl as far away as he could.
They made Kala comfortable far at the back where the musk of animals and dust enveloped them, the air cool and dark. The three of them spent the day there, each in their own private world of hurt, waiting for the night to fall so they could start again.
SIXTY-TWO
The dusty ochre ball of the rising sun blazed low in the east. Reece squinted against the glare as he dug the first-aid kit from the glove compartment and swallowed both vials of decanted Type O. He thumped his head against the headrest as the rush filtered through him. Nowhere near as good as straight from the vein, a little vinegary due to the anti-coagulant needed to keep the blood viable, but still, better than nothing.
He found the water bottle, rinsed and spat.
What a fucking disaster.
He lit a cigarette. West, to the main road, and then - north to Cairns? Would that be far enough away from Brissie to be off VS's radar? What about Darwin, those long monsoon summers? Perth, all on its lonesome on the west coast. If Mira was alive, she still had his blood in that bracelet of hers. She could find him, no problems at all. He'd thought occasionally about cutting that hand off, but then, the fucking thing probably would've choked him to death all by itself.
He started the engine and hit the air-con, then the radio. Nothing but static. He'd seen the aerials torn off, he remembered now. No matter. He could always stop in a town and phone it in: sit rep and retirement at the same time. What about the Jag? The shaggin' wagon? Turner had the keys to the Jaguar; if Matheson and Co. survived their run-in with Mira, they'd earned their ride. If Mira won out, well, at least she'd have a shady spot to wait for Felicity to turn up with the troops.
The four-wheel-drive rolled forward and he turned the wheel, bringing it around in an arc to head west.
And there she stood, a wraith silhouetted in the dusky light of dawn, huddled inside her hooded coat like some kind of monk stepping out of the mists of time.
A blackened hand emerged, fingers spread: Stop.
He thought about driving past. He thought about ramming her. But what he did was pull over and push the door open.
Who had he been fooling?
Mira dived into the seat and stayed down, cowering below the level of the dash. She'd lost her breastplate; her top was torn and stiff with blood. She was little more than a skeleton wrapped in flesh the colour of old headstones. He'd seen vampires like this before, usually at the end of a long hunt when they'd burnt up every drop they had. Reduced to animal instinct, just one big parcel of teeth and hunger.
'Drive,' she whispered, that one word carrying pain and thirst and such bitter determination. And something else, unless he was mistaken; something he'd never heard from her before. Despair.
'You found her then?'
'We danced, ate cake: it was lovely.'
'Did you get satisfaction, Strigoi?'
'Just drive.' She manoeuvred to open the dash compartment but he pulled her up.
'I've used it, and I've still got holes in me.' In other words, if you don't want to drive yourself, keep your fangs off, bitch.
She punched the dash. Something cracked. If it was her, she gave no sign. 'I could take it back,' she said. 'Penance for letting the grease monkey get the best of you.'
'The pup's alive, then.' He felt a curious mix of satisfaction and foreboding at the thought.
'For now. Him and his red-eye bitch, it seems.' She rubbed her left wrist. The blood bracelet second highest on her arm looked like a savage case of rope burn. Ouch.
He surreptitiously made sure his door wasn't locked. Just in case he needed a quick departure. Jumping from a moving vehicle would be safer than being locked in the cabin with a starving, pissed-off Mira.
'No word from Felicity?' she asked.
'Radio's out and I've lost my phone. We might meet her, if she's taking this road.'
Mira gave a short, sharp cry as she scrambled over to lay prone on the rear seat, out of the sunlight pushing through the window tint and the dust plume behind them.
'So where are we headed?' he asked.
'Nearest town. I need breakfast.'
'And then?'
''Bane,' she said. 'To face the music.'
'At least the Night Riders have been wiped out.'
'But the head remains.' She huddled inside her cloak. 'Wake me when we're there. I'm famished.'
'Oh, shit,' Reece said only minutes later.
'What now?' She sat up, a silhouette in the back seat against the sun beaming through the rear window.
'We're overheating.'
'You think?'
He tapped a gauge. 'I mean the truck. The grease monkey's nobbled us.'
'And this means?'
He pu
lled the four-wheel-drive up and reached for another cigarette. 'It's gonna be quite some time till breakfast. Unless Felicity turns up with takeaway.' Reece smoked in the light of dawn, waiting for the night or for rescue, whichever came first, while Mira lay in the back and fumed.
SIXTY-THREE
Hunched wattle trees dotted the graveyard like praying mourners; gum trees kept tall, straight vigil. Jesus, angels and the Virgin stood amid the headstones, glimmering in the light of the full moon. His father's grave, too new for a headstone, was the latest in a row of ochre humps. It had been dry out here, the past couple of years, and the earth, it seemed, did not accept these offerings, though they were buried deep. It left these scars cracked and parched, like needle sticks along a junkie's vein.
Kevin looked at his mother's corpse. How could she be anything other than natural? She who had lived as best they could, in love with the land, now returning to it as totally, as wholly, as possible. His crimson tears spotted his mother's cheeks as he laid her body on his father's grave. He had wanted to say some words, to let them both know how much he loved them, how much he needed their forgiveness. But the tears were insistent and he could not talk.
He knelt at his mother's feet, his father's too, then slowly lowered himself until he straddled her body. He reached out, first to the body, then to the soil. He pleaded with the earth, prayed to it. Taipan had shown him that clothes couldn't go, but he rejected that. It wasn't right, wasn't proper. He felt his blood warm, glow with a dull purplish light, as he reached out through the corpse under him. Colder than him. The earth under it, cold, then warm. The whisper of wind, the call of cockatoos filled his ears as he reached for the warmth beneath him.
Gradually, he and his mother sank, clothes and all, through the crusty surface, the thick dirt, until she rested close to the coffin's timber. For a moment he stayed, reaching out, finding only earth and death, equally quiet and dispassionate. Mother and father were long gone. Earth, he realised, as warm as it was, didn't care. He rose, earth scouring through him and around him, and lay on the surface, smelling the dirt, feeling it beneath him, all but undisturbed. The air was cool, the night still.
Meg stood nearby, arms folded. 'You've kind of freaked me out,' she said as he stood and dusted himself off.
'Yeah, me too.'
Kala and Danica waited with the Sandman, parked a polite distance away near the Monaro. Byely and Cherny stood at relaxed guard nearby. There'd been no evidence of trouble when Kevin had fetched the Rover, an old, curve-roofed caravan hooked up behind it and - godsend - an Esky full of decant.
The dogs had been cautious, but eventually jumped in the back for the long, tense drive around to rendezvous with Danica and a subdued Kala at the Sandman.
They'd found the Jag still there, and on the drive out passed Mira's torched four-wheel-drive, but saw no sign of its occupants. They'd driven on to Barlow's Siding so Kevin could pay his last respects.
'So what happens now?' Meg asked.
'Your folks still goin' to Brissie?'
'I think what's happened, with the servo and that, yeah, I think that's decided them.'
'And you? You're goin' with them?'
She bit her lip then said, 'I don't see why I wouldn't. My neck's much better. And no, I don't want you to bleed on it, but thanks again for the offer.'
They shared a laugh at the absurdity that was now normal.
'Danica says Brissie should be safe enough - she doesn't think Mira will try the same trick twice.'
'Do I want to know?'
'Just watch out for them city boys.'
She hit him in the arm, and they hugged. He breathed her in, her and the cemetery dirt, and he knew those smells, this moment, would stay with him forever.
'I'll never forget you,' he said.
She cracked a smile, her face so close to his, her breath warm and tea-fragrant. She'd been drinking a cup when he'd turned up at her house to fetch the Monaro, to bring his mother home. 'You'd better not, mister.'
'I can't,' he said, and kissed her. 'You're in my blood.'
She shivered and stepped away. 'You're going with them, aren't you? Those women.'
'It's not like that.'
'I wish it was that simple.' She held his hand. 'So, do you know where you're headed?'
He glimpsed Kala over at the cars pulling at her ear lobe while she talked to Danica. 'Dunno, but there's a pretty good chance I'll end up in Brissie, too. Gotta see a woman about returning something that doesn't belong to her.'
As they turned away from the grave and began walking toward the cars, he heard Taipan, surfacing from his lifestream, saying:
Takin' somethin' and keepin' it are two different things
He smiled. Finally, he and his blood father agreed on something.
He gave Meg the keys to the Sandman, wished her luck and kissed her again, a peck on the cheek. Then he joined Kala and Danica at the Monaro. He opened the door and flipped the seat forward for Danica.
'You better ride in the back, Mother; keep those mutts under control until we get back to the Rover.'
He waited for Kala to take the passenger seat, closed the door and went around to the driver's side. Gave Meg a final nod over the roof and got in, hit the ignition.
He was driving.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This story has been more than ten years in the making and many friends have contributed to its development since those early days in Rockhampton.
To Philip and Gavin and the other members of our dice-rolling coterie, my thanks for their friendship and contributions at the point of genesis; I've given credit where I could, however oblique, in the text.
Various writing groups have seen iterations of this tale: Vision, the Edge, SuperNova, the QUT Specficcers. Particular thanks are due to Ellen, Stephen and Peter for their support and erudite critiques of this final version, and editors Keith Stevenson and Sue Abbey for assessments that gave much food for thought. Jack Dann, the eternal optimist; Kim Wilkins, the energiser; Alison Goodman, Sean Williams and Paul Brandon have also influenced this story directly with their feedback over coffee, wine and good times that have made the journey a joy.
My thanks to Selwa Anthony, the most patient agent ever, and the staff at Xoum for taking the first (digital) step with Blood and Dust, and to Clan Destine Press's Lindy Cameron for taking the story and its sequel farther down the road. It's wonderful to see both books in both paperback and digital formats.
And my love and appreciation to my wife and fellow writer Kirstyn McDermott, who makes all things possible.
Vampires
in the
Sunburnt Country
Vols 1 & 2
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First published in eBook form by Clan Destine Press in 2015
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Copyright © Jason Nahrung 2012
First published by Xoum Publishing, Sydney 2012
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Nahrung, Jason
Blood & Dust
Vampires in the Sunburnt Country 1
ISBN 978-0-9942619-3-9
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