We drove through the upper Midwest and into the mountains, their bulk rising in the distance like huddled giants. To some extent, it reminded me of trips back when I was in college. We’d get into a handful of cars and go somewhere or anywhere, as long it was on the open road and some distance away. No one had cell phones in those days except the wealthy or arrogant, and no one in high school or college was anywhere near that important. We had to improvise with flashing lights, hand signals, and maintaining the same rate of speed.
It had been a long time since I’d had to do anything of the sort, and I hadn’t missed it at all. I suggested getting burner phones after the first time I sped up and wound up three exits past the others, but they vetoed my idea without hesitation. They were too worried about traceability, and they were right.
We used local libraries for web service, and we heard about Ferin attacks all over the place. Their violence was hard to ignore, and a casual glimpse at the news sites told us the vamps were on a nationwide rampage. The crimes were misidentified, but we could read between the lines. A farmer in Iowa had been ripped apart in the first bear attack in over a century. We knew the truth.
A woman in Texas, identified by the papers as Arlene McMaster and by Kamila as Sarah MacAillar, was completely eviscerated. They made the ID from her severed head.
We knew there were more. Those were the bodies found by the authorities. “Do you think,” I asked, as we huddled together in the van, “they might be doing this to make life more difficult for Ferin?”
Kamila rolled over on the bed. “Wow, more difficult than dying?”
“Ha, but no.” I rolled onto my back. “Okay, you’re not wrong. But let’s think about this. We stay under the radar because we don’t want the vampires to get us, but also because humans finding out about us tends to go badly for us. Am I right?”
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Tess said without cruelty.
“So, if they’re letting bodies get found by human authorities, don’t you think they’ve got an agenda behind it? If humans are aware there are people like us out there, they’re going to want to study us. Maybe even capture us and isolate what makes us unique. We shouldn’t underestimate the human desire for eternal youth and beauty, right?”
Tess grimaced. “Keep a good thought, why don’t you?” She flopped over and put her arm over my waist. “I can’t say you’re wrong. I’m pretty sure you’re right, actually. I hate it, but I’m pretty sure you’re right.”
“I am too.” Kamila’s voice was soft and cracked with grief. “I’m not entirely sure what we can do about it, though.”
I knew what I wanted to do about it. I wanted to take down every last vampire. I hadn’t thought of myself as bloodthirsty before, and I still didn’t. I just couldn’t think of any outcomes that didn’t involve destroying the vampires that made us what we were. I didn’t necessarily want them to suffer, and I didn’t care about who got the glory for doing it. I just needed them gone, and they were making my choice easier with each atrocity.
I found I loved the road. When Tess and I had first taken flight from Owl’s Head, I’d been frightened and worried about learning to master a new piece of equipment. Now that I knew what I was doing, I loved this lifestyle. I was moving toward a goal, which probably had something to do with it, but I also loved the freedom of it all.
In my old life, I’d bemoaned the divorce settlement that took most of my income despite the long hours I worked. Now, I didn’t care. I’d hated living in a one-room apartment, but I loved riding a motorcycle and sleeping in a van. The job I’d worked for twenty-eight years seemed like a waste of time and energy, like a cage with a paycheck and a routine. With each passing mile, I found the details of those years growing fuzzy. It seemed—wasteful. Maybe even cruel, albeit self-inflicted. After a moment of reflection, I knew that my former life had been a stepping stone, and I could embrace my life now without writing off who I’d been then.
I felt differently now, but my circumstances were different. I found I wasn’t sleeping as easily as I had been. It wasn’t because my body was changing, either. The war occupied my mind in the moments when I was still, making me learn to crave motion and new scenery. People like me—other Ferin—were being slaughtered on a regular basis. The three of us had already survived an attack, twice in the case of Tess and me. I’d seen enough at Owl’s Head to know not to expect to be so lucky the next time the vampires came around.
I needed to do more, to practice more. I’d grown capable with my fire, but I needed to be better. I needed to master it. I needed to put Kamila to shame so I could take down every vampire who came near me. I needed the fangs to fear me, like the Red Baron painting his plane red. I wanted them to see me coming at that moment before their death, and know it was me.
I dreamed a lot. One of the things I dreamed about was Margaret. I dreamed about her as I’d known her: unflappable, mysterious, unknowable. She’d been beautiful, seductive, and impossibly ancient. She’d been over fifteen hundred years old. The things she must have seen and done echoed in my senses like a library lost to a flood. Her death was a waste, and it hurt me.
I dreamed about her as I’d last seen her, too, and that was a lot less breathtaking. The vampires hadn’t cared what she’d seen or done. They hadn’t cared about her beauty, or maybe they just couldn’t see it. They hadn’t cared how brilliant she was. They’d clawed her open, slashed her throat, and left her for dead. In my dreams, I saw the gaping wounds in her chest. The bones of her throat called out to me. They didn’t call out for revenge. They called out a warning. You’re next, they whispered, in a voice made raw by the grave.
Sometimes, I’d see Tess or Kamila, or both, laid out beside Margaret. Sometimes even Daisy joined them, sightless and staring like the others. I could smell the corruption of it all, even in my dream eye. I needed to act, because carrying such sights would make me mad with loss and anger—and that I could not afford. None of us could.
I crept out after the others went to sleep and practiced with my fire, trying for a delicacy that would have seemed impossible a few days earlier. It was an issue of control. I wanted to be able to focus my power without having to be in imminent danger to do it.
I tried a few times to figure out a way to call up the power, and it was still too unpredictable to say it was effective. After a couple of hours, though, I figured out what did work. I didn’t work on the fire at all. Instead, I sat and focused on my feelings. Inward was the path, not pushing out like a muscle straining against a weight.
Kamila told me passion was the key. I needed to concentrate on my passions to control my fire. It followed that if I could control my passion, then fire would belong to me without reservation.
That first night, once I mastered my passion, I didn’t touch fire at all. I concentrated until I could summon every bit of rage I’d felt when fighting Micah and his cohorts, or every bit of lust I’d felt during my trysts with Kamila and Tess. By the time the sun came up, I could summon the same intensity of emotion I’d felt at the time, but at will, on command, and without fail.
We left again, and while I was tired, I wasn’t dragging and miserable the way I expected to be. A couple of coffee stops did the job just fine, and I had a day on the road to consider how and what I would do at practice that night. The session verged into fun, with me creating smoke rings of incredible intricacy, all with the ease of my newfound mastery.
According to Kamila, fun was important. We’d taken shelter in an abandoned picnic pavilion, to keep the bikes out of the rain. “I get there’s a war on,” she said, hugging her jacket a little closer to her against the wind. “Believe me, I get that. But we can’t let ourselves get obsessed and only think about the war. We have to remember joy and pleasure exist in the world too, or else why are we bothering to do this at all? We might as well let the vamps cut our heads off and be done with it.”
I stared at the fire we’d built in an old metal barrel. “We have to remember that our l
ife is worth living,” I surmised.
“Exactly.” Kamila rested her head on my shoulder.
Tess stuck her tongue out at both of us. “What if fighting vampires is fun? I like stabbing the undead. It makes me feel good and happy.”
“As hobbies go, I suppose it’s harmless,” I said, grinning.
“Well, maybe not to the vampires.” Kamila laughed, hiding her mouth with one hand.
“They don’t count.” Tess pretended to pout, and then she relaxed. “Seriously. Would you believe I used to knit?”
“So, take it up again,” Kamila said. “We can buy some supplies for you. There’s space in the van. Or we can just steal them. You don’t think I bought those quilts in there, do you?” Kamila’s smile was wild now. “We don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline. We need to enjoy life while we can.”
I couldn’t argue with her there. Margaret’s cold dead eyes still stared at me in my sleep. Being prepared was important, but so was enjoying the time we had.
Maybe immortality wasn’t all that different from being human after all.
Things felt like they were falling into place. Before, we’d been three separate people working toward a similar, but not common, goal. Now we were a team, even a family, all fighting for one another and alongside one another.
I had no idea if it would be enough, but I was ready to find out. I knew, deep down, Kamila and Tess were too.
27
I kept practicing as we moved closer to Idaho. I still couldn’t get Margaret’s dead face from my mind, which meant I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to use the time productively. Us Mainers never did like to waste things, whether it was time, energy, or supplies. I think we might have been somewhere in Nebraska when Tess and I got into an argument.
We were squatting in an abandoned barn, on an abandoned farm, surrounded by vistas of swaying corn. There was nothing but fields for miles around, although this farm had long since gone bust, the fields leased out by another farmer nearby. I took the opportunity to go out into an area that was mostly cleared. It might have had a grain silo or something once, but only a concrete foundation and some bare cement walls remained now, like broken teeth fighting a losing war against vines. It wasn’t visible from the road, or even from the barn. From the debris inside the old silo, we weren’t the first transients to use the place.
I had developed a tendency to focus intensely on my work. For one thing, I loved it. I could spend hours or even days just playing with the fire inside of me, now that I knew how to access it and what to do with it. For another thing, I didn’t get started until one o’clock in the morning. No one was around, and I could let myself go in the sheer joy of fire magic and all that entailed.
I did exactly that for two hours or more, only breaking when a hand fell on my shoulder. I reacted without thinking, queuing up a fireball and preparing to unleash Hell.
I recognized Tess just in time to pull back. The energy had to go somewhere, so I detonated a cinderblock I’d left in the middle of the practice space. We both ducked out of the way of the shrapnel, and when she came up, her face was twisted into a mask of fury.
“What in the name of all that’s holy are you thinking?” She wound up and shoved me with both hands in the shoulders. I staggered back, shocked by the onslaught. “You’re going to bring every vampire in Nebraska down on us! Is that what you want?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I recovered my footing easily because Ferin could do that. “There’s no one around for miles. It’s fine.”
“It is not fine!” She got red in the face from shouting so loud. “Did you think the vampires that attacked Kamila’s place were the only ones around? Have we been following the internet in every town for fun, or did you just fall off a turnip truck? Are you really that stupid? If you are, then the whole Ferin species is doomed, and I’ve been following an idiot for however long.”
I bristled. “I’m very much aware of what the vampires have been doing, thank you very much. Do you expect me to be able to fight them without practicing? Are you expecting maybe divine inspiration to miraculously come down from on high and somehow cause me to run out and fix the day? If you want me to be able to fight, I have to practice. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m practicing.”
Tess rolled her eyes. “Oh, ‘I’m practicing’, he says. Without any guidance, any instruction, or anyone older and wiser keeping watch or making sure no one’s tracking you? Genius. Fucking genius. You’re a careless idiot, Jason, and someone needs to tell you the truth in plain English and directly to your face. You don’t think about the consequences of your actions, and you don’t bother to get guidance or permission from the people who know more and know better. You just kind of waltz in, shit all over everything, and expect deference.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I didn’t know where her anger was coming from, but it was starting to piss me off. “No one expects deference. What I do expect is the same respect you’d give anyone else.” I stood up straighter. “Times are different now. That’s what you keep telling me anyway, and I don’t have any reason to disbelieve you. Margaret was ancient and impossibly powerful, and the vampires still cut her down like a spiderweb. How do you expect me to fight them if I can’t actually fight?”
She pointed at me. “Don’t bring Margaret into this. She thought very highly of you, but I think she was conned. You’re not going to save anyone, Jason. You’re going to get everyone you know and love slaughtered because you won’t listen, and I hope you go last, so you eventually understand that everything you do has consequences.”
Tess stormed off into the darkness, bumping shoulders with Kamila as she passed by. I hadn’t heard Kamila approach either, but Tess had been pretty loud.
Kamila raised an eyebrow. “Well, that was dramatic.”
“Apparently, Tess doesn’t think I should be practicing on my own.” I scrubbed a hand over my face in exasperation. Maybe she was right. Maybe all this sudden confidence was bullshit, and I would let everyone down when push came to shove.
Kamila bobbed her head from side to side. “Tess has some good points. She was trained in an environment with a lot of fear, where the whole safety in numbers thing was really hammered home again and again. Our opinions differ on that, obviously, and I doubt practicing your fire out here, far from prying eyes, is somehow going to bring the vampiric hordes down on us from all sides. But her feelings are valid too. Don’t forget that. She feels the way she feels for a reason, and we shouldn’t discount that, you know?”
I hopped up onto the low wall. “I know, and I know she’s much more experienced than I am. She’s seen more than I have, and I should be willing to listen to her a bit more. She’s also been through a lot since Owl’s Head fell. I don’t know what went on between her and Margaret—or Mort, for that matter—but she lost a lot of people. I have to be prepared for her to process things in her own way and time.”
Kamila jumped up to sit beside me. “Agreed, but that doesn’t mean she’s always right or that you should let her shout at you that way. She’s scared, Jason. We’re all scared in our own way. Losing my home, the place I’ve lived since before a bunch of malcontents declared they were independent of their king, was a huge blow to me. You’re scared too. You got attacked by some random fanger, and now you’re in the middle of a war you don’t even really understand. We’re bound to get a little testy with one another from time to time.”
“Even Daisy was a little snappish this morning.” I chuckled. She hadn’t snapped with those super-strong jaws of hers, but she’d been skittish and defensive of everything.
“She’s picking up on the things going on around her. I can hardly blame her.” She smiled. “She’s a good dog. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be doing half as well as I am with all of this. Seriously, Jason, would you be staying up this late and training if you weren’t terrified?”
I shook my head at her in mock disapproval. “You shouldn’t tell men they’re terrified, Kami
la. We take it as a challenge, and then we have to go do something dumb and macho to show how manly we are. Now we’re going to have to go take a detour while I climb a mountain with no equipment and my bare hands. Naked.” I grinned and deflated a little. “I keep dreaming about how Margaret died. Everything she was and everything she’d done, couldn’t save her. They just cut her down like she didn’t matter, you know?”
“I know.” Kamila bowed her head. “I wasn’t there, but it sounds like it was bad. It sounds like everything that happened at Owl’s Nest was a nightmare. They wanted me to live there when they built the place, you know?”
I nodded. “They wanted everyone to live there if I’m understood correctly.”
“They did, and I didn’t trust it. I didn’t think clustering a whole bunch of us in one place was a good idea. I still don’t.” She smiled a little sadly. “Don’t even get me started on the control issues. That was always one of the biggest problems I had with Margaret actually. She always needed to be in control. She had to be in charge of everything. A lot of Ferin wind up like that. It’s because we don’t become Ferin unless someone, at some point, took away all control from us when they made us. It complicates things. It makes it hard for us to work as a group or a team, which is a challenge when something like this comes up. We wind up dying a lot.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “Notice how Tess isn’t willing to not be in charge?”
I swallowed. I didn’t know if I had those tendencies myself, but I also hadn’t had time to process what had happened to me yet. I didn’t know if I ever would. “Great. So, we’re all a bunch of lone wolves trying to make a pack.”
“We’ll figure it out, Jason. Don’t you worry. She’ll get over it. She’s mad because she’s scared, not because she’s got a real reason to be angry.” Kamila stroked my hair, and I leaned into her touch. “She made a few good points, but that doesn’t mean she was right about everything. Though, you probably shouldn’t be out here practicing all alone. If you’d been attacked, you wouldn’t have any backup.”
Forever Young Page 16
