Blood Like Ice

by Lee Hayton

  Work. Sleep. Work. Sleep.

  “Hey!”

  For fuck's sake! You’ve got to be kidding me!

  A guard chained the two groups of vampires together while the other wandered off to take his break.

  Guess who ended up opposite me. Go on. Guess.

  “You ever hear the story about the vampire who turned back into a human?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed, but all that earned me was an elbow nudging into my ribs. “No,” I said, so much resignation in my voice that it should have had a gold watch and a farewell cake to go with it.

  “Well, it’s not part of the—” Jimmy’s voice cut off as he turned his head from one direction to another, clearly checking out where the guards were at. All subtlety. All the time.

  When Jimmy spoke again, he leaned forward and actually managed to lower the volume this time as he whispered. “It’s not part of the plan, but it’s always been my backup, you know.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know.”

  “It was a fellow called Eldon Willmott. Apparently, he’d been turned against his will and his girlfriend didn’t like it. He scoured the country for years, trying to find a cure that would enable him to be human again.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, screwing up my nose. “Eldon found the answer and turned back into a human and lived happily ever after?”

  Jimmy grunted, and when I checked his face, I saw his lower lip pouting out. I lowered my head back down to the task at hand, so he didn’t see when I rolled my eyes.

  “That’s a really great story, Jimmy. Why not tell me more about the other one?” I leaned over and whispered in a mocking tone, “Or do the other vampires not know about that one?”

  His finger went up to his lips so quickly that he jerked the chain for the entire gang. A guard walked over to stand behind him, giving Jimmy a quick poke in the kidney with his nightstick for good measure.

  The guards changed over so the other could have his break, then they pulled our gangs apart, and we went into our original formation.

  That would be my life for the rest of time. Welcome to eternity, kid.

  When the guards pushed us back into the truck, a faint line on the horizon showing us the most dangerous weapon in the world was on its way. None of us dawdled, all too well aware that if the guards didn’t get us back to the compound, there was nowhere safe out here for us to hide.

  When I finally ignored Jimmy’s chatter that night to fall asleep, I woke with the name Eldon Willmott echoing in the back of my mind.

  Chapter Four

  As the volume continued to blast from the television in Erika’s house, Jimmy held the remote high above my reach. He jabbed his thumb blindly while glaring at me to back off. After a few mispressed buttons, the volume thankfully subsided.

  “I can’t believe we’re out of the pits,” Jimmy said. “I thought that we’d die in there.”

  “I thought you said the plan was failproof.” Since the moment I was chained to him down in the dank slave prison, that was certainly what he’d told me. Even after I told him I got it. Long after I pretended to fall asleep.

  “Yeah. That’s what they said,” Jimmy agreed, not seeing a contradiction between the two statements.

  On TV, the fact that the plan was a dismal failure was laid bare for all to see. The scroll along the bottom was filled with hysteria that lessened each second as the containment proved successful.

  “Lucky we got out of there when we did.” I stood up and stretched, working a kink out of my back. The hunger had started to gnaw a hole in my belly. If Jimmy and I couldn’t sort something out soon, then young Erika might have a nasty surprise on her hands.

  “Do you think many more of us escaped?” Jimmy’s hopeful face turned to me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth of what I thought.

  “Why did you leave the conference center?” I asked him instead. “Were you on your way somewhere?”

  “Home,” Jimmy said. “I wanted to go home.”

  “Where’s that, then?” I sat down again and wriggled around for a few seconds, getting comfortable on the thick cushions. The couch cushions felt like a light cloud under my ass. A completely different experience from the couch at the apartment. I didn’t know what Jimmy must be thinking since he’d spent decades lying on the concrete floor of the pits.

  When he didn’t answer my question, I tried again, unsure if he wasn’t in the mood for talking—unthinkable—or hadn’t understood. “Is your home in the city or further out?”

  “I used to live in a place near midtown. When we arrived at the conference center, I recognized some of the streets.” He rubbed the side of his nose and frowned. “I don’t know how to get back there from this place, though. Far as I remember from the last time I was free, this was all undeveloped parkland.”

  That sounded about right.

  “How long since you’ve been home?”

  Jimmy stared straight ahead, his eyes focusing on a point at least a couple of yards before the TV. “I haven’t visited there for seventy years or more. My family hid me during the first three intakes. When they got desperate for new blood, I thought it better if I struck out on my own. They were bringing in penalties for people hiding vamps.”

  Jimmy paused and sucked air in between his clenched teeth. A tear ran down the side of his cheek. “I didn’t want them to pay for something I was, a choice that I’d made. Just like Nazi Germany, it was. When did you get picked up?”

  I gave a bark of harsh laughter. “My family took me down to the work centers on the first request. They didn’t want me to continue to pose a threat to the safety of their community.”

  Jimmy jerked his head around to stare at me with wide eyes. “Who the hell in your family did that?”

  “My mom and dad.”

  His look of astonishment transformed into horror. “Shit, man. That’s not right.”

  Although I’d been the one to tell him the truth, laced with the bitterness I still felt a hundred years later, I shook my head. “It wasn’t entirely their fault. They were getting older and couldn’t take care of me. Long before that, I’d fallen in with a bad crowd.”

  “Course you did,” Jimmy said, offering up a defense that I already had simmering in the back of my mind every day. “You were a teenager. Stands to reason, you’d get yourself into trouble. That’s what being a teenager is for.”

  I gave another laugh, this time with a touch more merriment. “On the other hand, no one expects their son to remain a teenager forever. That was a bit much of an ask.”

  “Were you a victim, then?” Jimmy pointed to his neck. “For the turning?”

  “No. I was sick, and my parents were told it was the only way.”

  Jimmy gave a disgusted tick of his tongue. “So they arranged for you to change, then got rid of you when they decided they’d made a mistake. Typical. Half the normals in this town need locking up, not us.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that.”

  I pressed my back into the cushions, enjoying the softness. Where had Erika got to? As soon as the question crossed my mind, I shook my head. I didn’t really care.

  “Most of what they’re saying on there is a load of rubbish,” Jimmy said, pointing at the TV. “Don’t they have standards for journalism any longer?”

  “Nope. Not for a long time. They’re as bought as anyone in the city.”

  With the soft couch and the flickering projection of the TV on the wall, all I needed was a beer in my hand, and I’d be the epitome of the white male image I’d grown up to believe I’d be one day.

  Of course, I’d need to substitute a pint of blood for a pint of bitter these days, but the image stayed true.

  “Where do you think the woman went?”

  I glanced at the stairs, no sign of Erika returning. “I dunno. Maybe she just went to bed and fell asleep.”

  “Do you think she’ll give us her car?”

  I looked at Jimmy, wondering if his brain cells had given up th
e ghost before or after he was turned. Sometimes the transition was rough.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think that a complete stranger is about to hand over her car to two wanted fugitives.”

  “Perhaps we should get going now, then. While the going is good.”

  Not a bad plan at all. If Erika was conked out upstairs, then it could be a few hours before she noticed the car missing. That was plenty of time for us to get somewhere safer, somewhere we’d blend in more. Maybe even somewhere with a blood bank that had crappy security.

  “Sounds good—”

  I cut off as Erika appeared at the top of the stairs again. “Aren’t you two coming up, then?” she asked and pouted. “I thought you were coming home so we could have some fun.”

  Jimmy jumped up to his feet, and half-bowed to her, earning himself a giggle. He started up the stairs while I followed along more slowly, wondering what Erika classed as ‘fun.’

  Luckily, it seemed to involve her opening up a bottle of wine and putting on a movie to project out on the wall of her room. The bottom edge was hard to see, with the number of clothes and rubbish piled on the floor.

  Given that Erika barely stopped talking, I doubted she intended to watch the movie anyway. Instead of staring at the screen, I paid attention to her, watching the pulse of blood flowing through her neck.

  “Excuse me,” I said, when it seemed to stare a moment longer would have me hypnotized into doing something dreadful. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

  Jimmy shot me a frown, but Erika just pointed in a vaguely left direction. Either she still hadn’t understood what our appearance meant, or didn’t know that vampires never required that room at all.

  On the wander down the hallway, I looked for simple objects to sell on the streets. Nothing caught my eye. It was evident that Erika was so wealthy that spending cash on things wasn’t necessary. She lived her life in credits, numbers on a screen, not cold, hard coin.

  Something small and golden would do, but I guessed that the jewelry would be in Erika’s room. A bit of an ask to steal it out from under her nose. I had mad skills at vandalism, but pickpocketing was beyond me. My fingers were too clumsy, my reactions too slow.

  According to the clock downstairs, it was just about midnight. If we could entice Erika into sleep, that would give us a good few hours to get ourselves sorted out before she’d wake and wonder what the hell had happened to her car.

  I wandered around on the ground floor for a while, opening cabinets and searching for a stash. If Erika was a long-term drunk—and judging by her behavior, that was a good bet—then she’d need something stronger than wine to get her fast asleep.

  In an old wooden wall unit, so ancient that it reminded me of childhood, I found her liquor. Grabbing hold of a bottle of vodka and a glass, I jogged back upstairs.

  Jimmy was standing in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot.

  “She’s asleep,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips in emphasis. “I think she’s feeling tipsy.”

  I smothered the resulting laugh with my arm, well-aware that I didn’t want to wake her up now. I deposited the bottle and glass next to the doorway. The car keys were back downstairs, on the table in front of the couch, just where I’d left them. Six hours till sunrise. We should be fine.

  “Where are you going?” Jimmy asked with alarm when I drove further up toward the foothills. From memory, that was where the remnants of the middle class kept their holiday homes. At this time of the year, with the breezes cutting sharper than was pleasant, half of them should be sitting empty. We could hide away in luxury or huddled down in the cellars underneath if our paranoia raised up too far.

  I outlined the plan to Jimmy, checking on the dashboard that we had enough fuel to make the trip.

  When he wrenched the wheel out of my hand, so the car spun across the highway, I realized my mistake.

  Chapter Five

  Jimmy turned out to be adamant about where we were going. After I wrestled control of the wheel back from him and narrowly avoided a collision with a pole, I pulled over.

  “You could’ve killed us!” I was breathing hard from the sudden scare of nearly crashing. Jimmy was breathing hard from a different emotion.

  “I need to see my family. You’re going the wrong way!” He reached over again and put his hands on the wheel, trying to steer the motionless vehicle. “We need to go back that way. I want to visit my old house.”

  “It’s been seventy years,” I said. Although I tried for a reasonable tone, what came out of my mouth wasn’t even close. Damn the breaking voice. After living with it for so long, you’d think I’d have a better handle on it. “None of your family are still going to be living there.”

  The sentence made perfect sense to me, but Jimmy just shook his head. “They’ll be there. We need to go.”

  I shook my head back at him, and he jerked up the door handle to step out onto the road.

  “Fine. I’ll walk, then.” He slammed the door shut and started to stomp away.

  Let him go, I thought. Just start up the car and keep going.

  But Jimmy had started to grow on me. Like an annoying wart that you can’t get rid of, true, but part of me all the same.

  I gave an exasperated sigh and started the car, reversing carefully, so I didn’t run him over in the street. When I passed him, and he didn’t slow to a stop, I rolled down the window.

  “Fine,” I called out. “We can drive to your house and see if anybody you know’s still living there.”

  He turned, open suspicion painted over his features like a mask.

  “But”—I held up a warning finger—“if there’s nobody there any longer, we turn straight around and head to where I want to go. Deal?”

  Jimmy clapped his hands. “Deal.” When he jumped back in the car, his eagerness spread to me like a contagion.

  “Who are you expecting to be there?” I asked, curiosity winning over the common sense of just letting it be.

  “My grandbabies,” Jimmy said. “My daughter was getting married when I had to go away. The whole family was also fertile. I’m sure that she had a whole litter of sprogs.”

  Sprogs. For some reason, that word made me smile, it fit with Jimmy’s attitude so perfectly. “You keep a close eye on the road,” I warned, turning the car in a wide circle to head back the way Jimmy wanted. “You’re the only one who knows which way to go.”

  He did as I instructed, leaning forward to peer out at the dark streets. I wondered if he’d been on any work parties close by to the area. He was the first vampire I’d met who worked in the same city where he’d once lived.

  I couldn’t imagine the pain of that nor did I want to try. For the first time, I felt grateful that the empire had the good sense to transport me halfway across the country. If I’d been planted on the back doorstep of my parent’s farm, it would have curdled my mind.

  “Here,” Jimmy said, pointing, “we’re getting pretty close.”

  I turned into the narrow street he indicated. It was an old suburb judging by the size of the road. Two cars would be able to pass each other, going in different directions. If anybody had parked out on the street, that would be a different story.

  “I think that we’re just a few blocks away,” Jimmy said, staring out the window and sounding less sure. “A lot of this just used to be empty spaces. They hadn’t developed the houses out this way at all.”

  I slowed down, letting him get a better look at the cross-streets that we passed by, hoping one would jog his memory. When I glanced over, I saw a worried frown pinching his brows together. Jimmy started to pull at the hairs on the back of his neck, a nervous tic.

  “I think it’s the next—”

  Lights flashed, and a siren shrieked behind me. It sounded so close that I jumped. The blue and red pulse lit the inside of our car as light as day.

  “I think they want you to pull over,” Jimmy said, turning to look over his shoulder.

  “No shit,” I
replied, pounding my foot flat on the floor as I accelerated away.

  Halfway through the chase, I was sure that we were caught. In front of me, growing closer with alarming speed was a brick wall. No exit. I’d had time enough to read the sign as it zipped past. No time to turn the car onto another path.

  “He’s getting closer,” Jimmy yelled in my ear. “They’re right on our tail.”

  So helpful. As if I’d forgotten that we were being pursued by the good old blues and twos. If I drove straight at the wall, would that kill us? Send a stake of metal straight through our shriveled hearts? Or would we have to suffer through the pain as the police cuffed us and dragged us back to the pits?

  A dark shadow caught the corner of my eye, and I turned the car toward it. No time to ease into the bend, my weight was thrown into the center of the seat, and the belt cut into my shoulder with sharp teeth.

  A bump sent Jimmy and me crashing up into the roof of the vehicle. The sudden smack stunned me—I saw red and gold stars. Then the wheels gripped hold of the tarmac and squealed, plunging us forward. There was too much going on for me to glance into the side mirror. I was too short to see much in it anyway.

  A building flashed past on my right-hand side. We’d gone up a driveway. An industrial plant, judging by the size. As I regained control of the steering, I planted my foot flat on the floor again and tried to gain some distance. The corner of the building was coming up. If there were a gate around the bend, we’d be smacking straight into it. No time to stop.

  The tires screeched, burning off their tread against the tarmac as the vehicle pulled in two directions at once. For a moment, the steering wheel slipped under my hand, possessed with its own ambition. I gripped hard, twisting my body with the force to get it to turn where it didn’t want to go. The back of the car slid out, the wheels skidding as though on ice.

  I eased off on the accelerator. The seat belt was cutting into my body so severely it felt like a charley horse in my shoulder, a deep stitch in my side.

  As soon as I felt the back wheels recover their purchase, I turned the wheel and accelerated. No gate. No obstructions. I hit the road and hauled the vehicle around to the side again. Around the building and out the other end, the longest U-turn in the world.