I hear the stones strike an object that is both solid and soft, yet yielding. I can smell Juan"s faded essence. I can smell death.
The crowd parts enough for me to see. When I do, I let my head slump forward, smacking the cool glass. I put my hands up to the window. I"m not hungry but the fangs surface, dropping long and sharp; curving slightly inward. I squeeze shut mine eyes against the horror looming just outside the window. The image will forever be engraved on my retinas. I no longer care that this lair has also been compromised. I will now be forced to go to ground, use one of my nasty emergency shelters. I just keep my eyes closed. I keep seeing my friend, Juan.
“Aw damn, nigga,” I murmur softly, my uncased talons chalking down the glass blackboard, “what they do to you?”
I feel dizzy again, and with that horrific image still clanging about in my head, I slip headlong into another one:
DRIFTER
1850, anno Domini
T
he darkness was deep and complete. Only the vampire could see through it. Huge contained fires kept the California winter at
bay for the miners of the Great Gold Rush.
The vampire peered out over the expanse of miner"s tents, saloons and brothels. They were stretched out before him like giant game board tiles. His teeth lengthened and sharpened. The yellow eyes missed nothing. Talons split fingertips. He was ready for more blood.
He had been feeding on miners and whores for weeks, been feeding well.
It was two in the morning. The rough drunkenness was winding down. The vampire wanted to feed one more time before ending the night. He was thinking possibly his time here. The vampire had a sensation of personal danger. He couldn"t shake it.
The vampire came to the main thoroughfare. He rested beside a water trough, free of horses, and listened to the night. All sounds he could place. He rose to move and caught sight of the wooden church. When completed, it will be by far the most impressive building around. The vampire looked skyward. He saw the peak of the steeple, where a cross silhouetted itself against the moon-brightened night sky. His hands began to burn. He dunked them quick in the water trough, dried them on his coarse broadcloth pants. The sensation departed and he was still hungry.
The vampire moved out, staying contained in the shadows. He darted furtively from dark spot to dark spot. He never let mortals see even a hint of him.
The brothel was arrived at. He paused beside the rare clapboard structure. High false-front dwarfed the tents and lean-tos and surrounded it on all sides.
The vampire, using exposed talons, fluently scaled the walls. On the topmost floor, whores plied their trade. He entered through a window into a low, lamp- lit room. A miner there was gustily getting his dollar"s worth. The vampire considered the two, both dismissed. They"re not on the menu that evening. It"s too disruptive to attack more than one human for food at a time.
The vampire darted toward the door, opened it and then closed it behind him. So silent was he, the miner"s plunging ass missed not a bob. The pair remained oblivious to the predator.
In the hallway, with no one in sight, the vampire sniffed the air. Sorting through sweat, dirt, stale tobacco and soured secretions to detect presence of oxygenated blood.
The heady scent curled its finger at the vampire. He followed it down a narrow corridor to a closed door. wooden door. and went inside. A woman was there, lying on the bed and she was nude. Her restrained wrists, ankles chained to metal eyelets screwed into wall and floorboards were strange. Her legs were spread He tested the handle of the scarred It rotated freely. He pushed it open wide open and her menstruation leaked like a burst vein from her bushy vagina.
The whore was semi-conscious the from opium smoke that still lingered in the room. The vampire was on her in an instant. Her muffled protest was weak. He punctured her carotid artery for a fast drain. The bright pressurized blood"s a powerful tsunami as he chugged it down his throat.
A random thought occurred to the vampire as he swallowed gulp after gulp: as good as the blood was; it did not have the oxygen content he had smelled down the hall. Not even with her mense, which was rich gravy to him, luscious and tasty, but devoid of nutritional content.
The muffled moan coming from the whore didn"t sound right either and why was she tied up?
The vampire removed his bite from her neck and pulled down on the whore"s chin. He saw wadded up cloth as he looked in her mouth. The cloth was shoved far down her throat, in case she needed to scream. He felt the danger now and looked up quick. It was coming from the closet, but it was already too late.
The next instant, the closet door burst open anda human in miner"s garb and sheriff"s badge came out shooting.
Both barrels of the shotgun cried out. The blast hit the vampire full in the chest. It knocked him off his feet and tossed him back through the air. Instinct and lust for survival had the vampire off his back and crouched. His right hand was flat on the floor in front of him, a cat ready to spring.
The Sheriff broke open his shotgun and fervently thumbed in more shells. He brought the shotgun together with a snap. The vampire pushed up from the balls of feet and the flat of his hand. He shot straight up, breaking through water-stained ceiling as the second pair of muzzle shots fired. The sheriff gazed through the cordite smoke a hole in the ceiling that the vampire made. Great drops of cool blood fell from the ragged hole. Blood hissed when drops of it smoking shotgun.
The sheriff rooftop. He glanced down at the dead whore, a convicted murderess and unwilling accomplice. What she stared at, no one else could see.
The vampire crouched on the roof of the brothel. Sheltered there by the false front, he tried to hold himself together. A great deal of his precious blood had been lost and his strength with it. He needed to find a dark hole to crawl into so he could hide and heal.
He glanced around, realizing immediately that he was worse off than he thought. There were more miners waiting for him up here on the roof. It was an ambush, plain and simple. The vampire heard rifles being made ready to fire. All weapons were pointing at him. The miners had smiles painted on their rough-hewn faces.
A moment of silence…
More than twenty bullets slammed the vampire against coarse planking of the false front. He began to breathe truly hard as more blood and the oxygen it carried gushed forth, wasting itself as it slopped out onto the rooftop.
The moonlight glinted off the head of an axe. It swooped through the cold, still air and buried itself in the planking behind the vampire. It separated head from body.
pasted the hot barrel of the
could hear footsteps on the
The vampire had just enough time to see his decapitated body. Right before the life winked out of him.
Chapter Five
I
disconnect and stare at the phone. I need to see the Pharisees and- snap- they just up and call a nigga. I put the phone away and continue
driving and thinking. Juan"s head is in a box in the same seat his girl sat in the day before. Juan died thinking Mary is dead. They put his head on a pike and stuck it in the ground. That"s what I had to wake up to.
I came to the edge of the pier and stop. It is empty of people. I get out and take the box from the passenger seat. I fill the box with fist-sized stones. I curl duct tape around the box and walk it out to the water"s edge. I sigh and drop the heavy box over the railing. I watch it as it quickly disappears beneath the filmy surface of the polluted lake. My bloody tears follow it.
“I"m sorry,” I tell my friend.
I go back to my car and start it up. I turn it around and pointthe car"s nose toward Big City. The Pharisees are waiting for me there.
Soon I exit The Harbor, pass the state line, and motor swiftly through Big City"s South Side. I drive past the baseball stadium and the infamously looming housing projects. I distance myself from the empty-eyed junkies, penny ante hustlas and the mentally dangerous as fast as the neglected, potholed streets will allow. There are some places even we vampires steer clea
r of. Normally I"ll avoid this shit like the plague. Butthere"s a pile of money on the line and that pile is mine.
I peer through dark sunglasses at the disgusting festival enacting outside. More human flotsam, I think. However if I play my cards right and the Pharisees listen to reason, these wrecked excuses for people might very well be future customers. The thought makes me grin, but I sure as hell don"t slow down.
Then that weird sensation and the dizziness begin. Whether I want to or not, I have to veer my car into a sketchy lot in a sketchy part of town and skid to a stop. The seizing starts the second I activate the emergency brake and lock the doors:
KING
1610, anno Domini
The vampire was absolutely alone. He lay upon the sacred bloodstained rock, watched the morning sun rise. His last sacrificed had long since been consumed, he had nothing left for him to eat.
He re-tore the partially healed scar on the underside of his wrist and drank again. The act made him feel dizzy and confused.
He glanced upward at the sun darting its rays through the leafy branches. The sun will heat up the sacred boulder later in the day, but for now it was in shadow. The shadows cast can look like different shapes to his imagination. Now these shadows that are nothing visually save two crossed lines made his hands burn.
He rose and stumbled into the cool of the ocean. He rubbed burning palms in the sea until the sensation dissipated. He turned to the horizon. The vampire looked past the sharply jutting outcropping of jumbled rocks. They split the ocean from his island home, where he was the king of nothing.
The king made his way back to shore and the sacred rock. His breathing intensified.
The vampire was a boy king, one whom was served always by others. Never once in his entire life had he had to fend for himself. The king never hunted. He was always, simply, presented with prey.
The king grew fat with the blood of his island. No outsiders ever came until long after all was gone, their civilization long perished. He never saw any, save islanders similar to him. He did not know of the outside world. The king didn"t think the world was any greater or deeper in meaning than what he saw and felt. When he became king, following his father"s death, he did what he always did; he fed.
The last one, his very last subject, gave herself to him. He drank her like she was the season"s first fruit instead of the last. It never occurred to him thatthere wasn"t any more. He only knew he was hungry right then and had been for a long time. He was starving. The overstretched skin of the king hung now in folds. He looked just like a tick that was leeched of its blood.
He lay back as the sun rose over him. He was so cold. He was tired. He suckled on his wrist until it numbed. He no longer had the strength to raise his other wrist to hungry lips. It wouldn"t have mattered anyway, for he had nothing left. The king was dying.
He began to cry, this king, knowing what it meant to be absolutely alone. He understood he was dying. It was painful and there was none left to feed or comfort him.
The smell rose with the sun. Heat renewed its baking of all the bodies lay decomposing throughout this idyllic garden. It was more than the king could count. More than the island predators and scavengers could readily consume. It was even more than the jungle could reclaim.
The sun reached its apex and split the starved vampire"s skin. The blackened husk separated itself from the wet fascia beneath. The pain would have brought stark madness to him, but the vampire had died. His people, their civilization and the king himself, all shared the same final hitching gasp.
Then there was nothing left. Not even memories.
Chapter Six
I
wait for the Pharisees in their penthouse. I was summoned and, like a good boy, I wait patiently for them to arrive.
The wall slides behind me.
“Caiaphas,” I greet without turning. I smell the horrid stench of death in the old man. “You"ve changed.”
“Yes,” he replies, “So I have.”
I turn. The fleshof the old human"s face quivers and moves about. Caiaphas seems to be actually decomposing and he smells like a swamp fart. It"s as if the old man has not realized he is dead.
I smell oxygen coursing the Pharisee"s veins. He is definitely alive. Caiaphas Pharisee merely appears to be dead: his body a rotting shell. I conclude that something powerful is keeping his rotting shell and soul together. I don"t know what sort of entity could keep the Pharisee intact, or why it would even want to. But something is.
“Like you with us Pharisees, Pilate,” Caiaphas begins, ending the wondering, “I too have a Master toplease.” He gestures for me to sit and I takea chair. “And our Master demands asacrifice,” Caiaphais explains.
“What kind of sacrifice?” I ask.
“More on that in a moment,” he states with a cracked, false smile. “Let"s discuss you and your troubles of late,” he continues,“You are having difficulties?”
I look to him direct. “Yes,” I agree, “I"m having a great deal of trouble.”
Caiaphas reaches forward and removes a custom- made smoke from a thin titanium case. He offers one to me and I decline. The Pharisee puts the cigarette to the rotting, peeling parchment where his lips used to be. I"m there with flame to kiss the tobacco. If Caiaphas is startled by my unseen vampire movement, I can"t tell. I return to my chair with the same speed.
There was no comment from Caiaphas, so I decide to boogieright in: “Did Herod have your blessing to grab my spotand shut me down?” I ask one of the Caesars, “Or was the crazy fuck acting on his own?”
“Quite alone, I assure you,” Caiaphas replies, smoking.
I thought for a moment, then: “Where do you stand on this?” I ask. “I need to know what side of the fence you"re on.”
“Well,” Caiaphas begins, “Herod was technically justified sanctioning you due to your three missed quotas.” I try to protest, but the Pharisee stifles mewith a raised hand, “But we feel he was too wanton in the implementation of said sanction.”
This shit, I tell you. It makes me quiet. Hell, I know bullshit whenit"s set down in front of me. It seems I"m to be spoon fed this rot. But I don"t eat shit. It"s time to set the record straight. I lean forward, counting off:
“Your Herod broke into my lair, he killed my best nigga,” I retort, counting fingers as I list, “the motherfucker stole my product and my money.” I stop. “Three million dollars in washed cash he stole from me and I"m gonna take it all back,” I boldly tell the Pharisee through aching, clenched jaws. “I need you to look the other way.”
Caesar Caiaphas Pharisee considers me for a time, smoking.
“What about Herod?” Caiaphas asks next, the shadow of lipless smile showing through his collapsing face, “What do you suggest we do with him when you are finished? Herod isn"t exactly going to be thrilled with this. He could be a big problem for us.”
“I wouldn"t fret too much about Herod,” I assure the old man, “I don"t think there will be anything left of the motherfuckerto worry about.” I lean back and cross mylegs. “It will be as if he"s never been.”
“I see,” Caiaphas replies. “I believe you and I can come to an accommodation.” The Pharisee squashes out his cigarette. He leans in my direction with hisfolded hands on knees. “We need to agree on terms.”
“Will you consent to look the other way?”
“Better than that, Pilate,” the old man retorts, smiling big now. A surprise, he tells me: “I will give to you Herod"s throne.”
Perhaps, I think, Herod has tripped on his dick once too often.
To be sure I ask: “The business, all of it?”
“Yes, vampire, all yours, answering to none but us,” he tells me. “But you must do something for us first.”
Of course, I think, a nigga can see that coming. Gas, grass or ass, nobody rides for free. No matter.
“Just tell me what you need,” I reply.
“First you tell me something, Pilate,” the Pharisee counters, “What do you know of this littl
e girl, thisImmanuel?” The Pharisee stops, lights another cigarette. I stayput. “You know, the one they call the Christ?”
I stay long enough to get the details. I can feel it bubbling up to the surface again. I make it down the Pharisees" private, secure elevator to the parking garage. Caesar"s minions swing my car around to me. I get in and am just able to leave the confines of the parking garage when another wonderful seizure comes acallin":
STOWAWAY
1492, anno Domini
A
ll alone in the midst of a nameless sea, the vampire bobbed up and down with the swells. His wretched heart burning oxygen
as it pounded his breast. Tiny wavelets collided with the boy"s face, sea-salt stinging his eyes. It was dark, but his yellow eyes were
piercing. When he blinked away the
sharp and
sting, he discerned waves from the moving silhouettes that were beginning to encircle him.
The boy hunkered down behind a stand of barrels. He watched the Captain get welcomed aboard the immense sailing ship.
He morosely drained a large tabby cat. He had to get aboard that ship. The boy was frightened and past caring where the sailing vessel was bound. He didn"t care because the local populace searched for him, even at this very moment. The boy glanced cautiously behind him, convinced they would fall upon him each and every time he turned to look.
The boy came to the sea, figuring to stow away on a ship. He"d live off shipboard rats and maybe a sailor, or two. If a deckhand was foolish enough to be topside on a dark and stormy night, that is. He could get away with that, the boy was sure. Sailors fell overboard every voyage. Everyone knew that.
The boy put the deflated cat gently, quietly down. He stuffed the animal between two crates. He looked about, scanning for danger. There was no one near where he hid, nobody paying him any mind. The gangplank was empty. Nothing to be heard but sounds of toasts recited in the Captain"s honor.
The vampire boy rose and, after another quick peek, darted aboard the ship. No one saw a thing.
The moving silhouettes began tightening their concentric circles, criss-crossing themselves around the boy. The trail of blood had spread out, away from him. The blood attracted unwanted attention from ocean predators.
THE FALL Page 3
