Sins of the Blood: A Vampire Novel
Page 33
Both of the other bottles were 151 Bacardi Rum. Her luck was holding.
She tiptoed into the living room, and found a bowl of matches on the counter. The lingering scents of blood and sex made her longing grow. She clamped down on it. This was her chance. Her only chance. She would take it.
Cammie poured the rum on a pile of papers, then left a trail of liquid that went to another set of doused papers. She continued all the way through the nest, stopping at doorways. Each time she made a noise, she jumped and waited, expecting to be caught. But no one seemed to notice her. She skipped the door that Van had said was hers—Van seemed too savvy not to investigate a strange noise—and went down the hall, ending her trail in the library at the fireplace.
Then she grabbed a piece of wood, took it into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and whittled the edge into a point. Mikos wasn't in one of the main rooms. She already knew that. He had to be somewhere more protected. Probably off the library.
She went back in. The room smelled faintly of old books and rum. She grabbed another piece of wood to use as a club. Her sense of smell was becoming more acute. She closed her eyes and sniffed, finally getting a whiff of the scent that was uniquely Mikos.
His blood bubbled in her mouth, rich and effervescent, like good champagne.
Her groin ached. She wouldn't let him touch her. She would go in commando style, as Sarge had taught her. She would stake him, then light the fires, and leave.
She didn't think of what she would do to Ben.
She wouldn't let herself.
Chapter Forty-Four
The door beside his closed. Ben snapped awake. He had been sleeping fitfully, dreaming of Cam-Cam spattered in blood. She had been screaming for him—Ben! Ben!—but someone was dragging him away.
He sat up. Nearly four. Not close to time to get up. Then he heard it again. The creak of a door. The sound of someone walking in the halls. Sounded like no one was sleeping well. At least Cam was in her room. Protected.
But he had better see. Van might have had other plans. Damn that woman. He would take her as soon as he got the chance. Maybe even later today.
He got out of bed and pulled on his kimono. Then he opened his door.
The hallway smelled of alcohol. A thin trail of it ran into the kitchen. Someone had let a cow loose in the building. He wrinkled his nose. Distasteful.
The door to the library was open. The alcohol trail led him in there. He followed it and saw Mikos'[C&F152] door standing open.
A scream echoed through the building, long, deep, and male. It made Ben's hair stand on end. Something crashed in Mikos room, and then the scream again until it gurgled and died.
He ran to the door. Cam was there, crouched over Mikos. She was covered in blood, a block of wood in one hand and a stake (dowel) in the other. Mikos body was flailing on the bed, turning to dust, disappearing.
(Daddy!)
"What did you do?" he asked.
She looked up then, obviously startled. "Ben."
"What did you do?" He would have to kill her. She had killed Mikos. She had damaged the nest.
"I—" she looked around, then stopped, the nervous movement gone. She pulled the stake from the skeletal form on the bed. "I did it for you, Ben. You need to be in charge here."
God. He wanted to believe that. But she hadn't shown any loyalty to him in the past few days. When he found her, she had been in a room filled with garlic and vampire hunters. She had killed vampires before.
Sometimes they're too strong for the drug, Van had said. Sometimes they break free.
He held up his hands. He would have to get her out of here. Then he would figure out what do to with her. "Cam, you aren't going to kill me, are you?"
She was frowning. She got off the bed. "We have to get out of here. He probably woke up the whole nest."
"This room is sound-proofed. Whatever they heard, they heard through the open door."
She held the block of wood in one hand, the stake in the other. "I don't want to live like this any more, Ben," she said.
He took a step closer to her. He was stronger. He would be able to get the equipment from her. "Cam-Cam, you have no choice. You can't deny what we are."
"We're children of vampires. We don't have to be like him, Ben." Her knuckles were white around the stake.
"We're not like him," Ben said. "I have learned control. You will too. We can beat this thing."
Cam shook her head. "It devours everyone in the end. Don't you see? Eventually you'll lose every bit of caring you ever had."
He took another step toward her. "Cam, that's a myth. I care for you."
"You don't know me. It's some crazed blood lust talking. I'm going to burn down this nest, and then I'm going to leave. You can come with me if you want or die here." Her hands were trembling. Mikos' blood had dried on her face.
"And then what, Cam? You'll feed. That's how you'll survive. There is no other way." He took another step, gauging her strength, and her distance.
"They have rehab programs now."
Ben laughed. "Rehab, Cam? No matter what they do, the craving will never go away. You'll have to live with it every day, every minute."
She swallowed. For a moment, he thought he had gotten to her. Then she shook her head. "Better that than living like this. I'd rather fight myself than steal the life's blood from someone else."
"I never thought you would have a conscience, Cam," he said.
"I never thought you wouldn't."
Then he lunged for her, and caught her in the waist. She slammed back against the wall, the block slamming into his back and knocking the air from his lungs. She kneed him in the groin and rolled away. Pain shot through him, bringing tears to his eyes. She grabbed the stake and brought it down. In the last moment, he managed to scoot. She caught the sleeve of his kimono. He tore it getting away.
He grabbed at her again, but she rolled. She had been trained to fight. She kicked with startling accuracy, hitting him in the stomach and groin simultaneously. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. But he had to. He had to get away.
He started to roll, but she brought the stake down through his chest, using both hands to plunge it through his body. Blood gushed from his mouth. Jesus. He had loved her. He didn't deserve this. He was only trying for the best for her.
He flailed at her, but the strength was leaving him. She grabbed the block with her free hand and pounded the stake in deeper.
She had protected him. She had always protected him. So why was she hurting him now?
"Cam-Cam," he whispered, through the blood. "Cam—"
Chapter Forty-Five
And then he died. Cammie rested her head on the edge of her stake. "God, Ben," she whispered. If only he had wanted to change. If only he had wanted to try, she could have taken him with her. But he hadn't. They were forever doomed to be separate and different.
If only she could have seen it before.
His mouth was open, his eyes empty. His skin didn't change. His body remained the same. He was so new that the only vampiric changes he had suffered had been internal.
"Oh, Ben," she said again.
A door opened in the outer hallway. She lifted her head. She still had a whole nest of them to fight. The only thing she could do, the only thing she had time to do, was light fires and leave.
She pulled the stake from Ben's heart, and grabbed her block of wood. Then she got up,[C&F153] and with shaking hands felt for the matches. They were in her back pocket. She pulled them out. They had stayed dry despite all the blood. She tucked the block of wood and stake under her arm, ran to the door of Mikos' bedroom, then glanced around the library. No one yet. She lit the first match and tossed it into the mess she had made near the fireplace. Then she dashed into the hall, lighting matches and dropping them as she ran, feeling the heat as the rum ignited.
The doors to the kitchen opened. Cammie turned and slammed the wood block into the face that appeared. Van. She slid backwards, not expecting the attack. Camm
ie stood over her, and using the same technique she had used on Ben (Bless Sarge & her training) slammed the stake into Van's heart. Van grabbed it, struggling. Fire was following the rum trails. Cammie could either finish her or get out.
Cammie was going to get out.
She ran down the hall, pausing only in the living room to light another match and throw it on the first pile she had made. It erupted into bright blue flame. Then she dashed into the hall and down the stairwell. The air here was cool. It smelled of leather, not vampires.
If she made it to the street, she would be free.
Chapter Forty-Six
It was dark by the time the van reached downtown Seattle. They had driven as fast as they could. DeFreeze had contacted both the Portland and the Seattle police, giving them the address, but not telling how he had obtained it. Eliason sat in the passenger seat, Whitney beside him, and DeFreeze driving. They had not spoken since they left the vampire's body in the woods.
They had dumped the gurney and gone to DeFreeze's secluded mountainside home. Whitney had used a hose to get the blood and garlic out of the back of the van, but Eliason was sure that it had done no good. The scent of garlic still covered him, even though he had changed clothes and showered.
That scent would haunt his dreams.
As they crossed the freeway bridges going into the city, they saw a fire lighting the night sky. "That's the direction we need to go," DeFreeze said.
He turned the van toward the lights, and within a few blocks they stopped. The police had cordoned off the area. A fire had devastated most of a building in the center of the block.
DeFreeze got out of the van. Eliason wasn't far behind him. The Seattle air was cold and smelled of sea, smoke, and ash. DeFreeze approached a cop, pulled out his wallet and opened it to his ID.
"Jason DeFreeze," he said. "I called in with a tip early that there was a nest of vampires in this building."
The cop nodded. "We had a swat team ready to go when the whole upper story of the building erupted."
"Anyone get out?" Eliason asked. Whitney had come up behind him, silent. His face was illuminated by the flames.
The cop shook his head. "Not while we were here. But it had to be burning a while before it went down like that."
Red light danced across Whitney's face, making him look almost satanic. Eliason doubted they would spend much time together again. Whitney took his arm. "She got them, Brett," he said.
"How do you know it was Cammie?" DeFreeze asked.
Eliason stared at the burning building. He wouldn't find her here. He knew that. He would put Whitney on a plane in the morning and search up and down the I-5 corridor. He had an idea where she would go if she lived.
"He knows it was Cammie," Eliason said, "because there was nothing in the world she hated more than vampires."
Chapter Forty-Seven
She was driving down Interstate Five in Ben's Lexus. She had no money, and the blood smell on her clothes was driving her crazy. She had planned to drive to the rehab center in Roseburg, where no one knew her, but she couldn't. She knew she wouldn't make it that far. She was hungry, and desperate, and if she got close to anything human, she might take a drink.
She needed protection.
So she was going to the nearest rehab center, just inside Portland. Then she would wire for her money and her clothes, and begin the day-to-day living.
Fighting the craving, minute by minute, as Ben had said.
Rehab had failed in the Midwest, but Brooker had said that was because they had only used counseling.
She hoped to hell he was right. She couldn't carry this monkey on her own.
And if she succumbed, she would have killed Ben for nothing.
Cam-Cam, he had whispered.
Daddy.
The thing they never told anyone, the thing the experts never put in the books, the thing the Center only barely acknowledged, was the love.
He had been the only father she had ever had. Despite what he did to her, she had loved him.
Just as she had loved Ben.
And she would have to live with that forever.
(The End)
Table of Contents
Opening
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part Two
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Part Three
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
About Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Award-winning, bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has published books under many names and in many genres. Her fantasy novels about the Fey have been published all over the world, and were recently rereleased in the United States as audio books by Audible.com. She has won the World Fantasy Award and is the former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. She also writes fantasy novels under the name Kristine Grayson. For more information on her work, go to kristinekathrynrusch.com.
Copyright Information
Copyright © 1994 Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing 2011
Cover Illustration by Ivan Bliznetson/Dreamstime.com
Parts of the first section of this novel appeared in altered form as the short story "Children of the Night" in The Ultimate Dracula edited by Byron Preiss and published by Dell Books in October, 1991.
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[C&F1]My correction.
[C&F2]My correction.
[C&F3]My correction.
[C&F4]The book deleted the capital “K”, but I think this is correct.
[C&F5]My correction.
[C&F6]My comma.
[C&F7]My comma.
[C&F8]My correction.
[C&F9]My correction.
[C&F10]My correction.
[C&F11]My correction.
[C&F12]Book has “fifties.”
[C&F13]The book has “seventies and eighties.”
[C&F14]My correction.
[C&F15]My comma.
[C&F16]My correction.
[C&F17]my comma.
[C&F18]My comma.
[C&F19]My comma.
[C&F20]My correction.
[C&F21]My correction, for consistency.
[C&F22]My comma.
[C&F23]My correction for consistency.
[C&F24]My correction for consistency.
[C&F25]My correction.
[C&F26]My correction.
[C&F27]My capitalization, for consistency.
[C&F28]Book has “nineteenth.”
[C&F29]My correction. Book has no quote marks.
[C&F30]My capitalization for consistency.
[C&F31]My capitalization for consistency.
[C&F32]My correction.
[C&F33]You used Grunwig elsewhere – the book changed them all to Henderson, so I’ve done the same.
[C&F34]My comma.
[C&F35]My correction.
[C&F36]My comma.
[C&F37]My correction.
[C&
F38]my comma.
[C&F39]Not capitalized in the book.
[C&F40]my correction for consistency.
[C&F41]my correction for consistency.
[C&F42]My comma.
[C&F43]My correction.
[C&F44]My correction.
[C&F45]My correction.
[C&F46]My correction, for consistency.
[C&F47]My correction.
[C&F48]My comm..
[C&F49]My correction.