“What if he won’t come?” Clarkson asked.
“I move that we appoint Clarkson to bring him back, by any means necessary,” Fitzsimmons quickly followed up. Good for her. She was following his instructions exactly, though she wouldn’t be expecting this last bit of inspiration.
“Wait,” she began to object, but it was already too late. The others were raising their hands, even Peterson, and she fell silent. For once, her countenance took on some emotion as she shot Fitzsimmons a poisonous look.
“Terrill must learn that he is one of us,” Hargraves said. “He has been free too long.”
They all nodded in agreement, and again Fitzsimmons felt a moment of giddiness.
This was going to be fun.
“Shall we eat?” Hargraves asked.
Though they were meeting in an office of a reputable bank, it was a back room where few, if any, employees ever wandered. If they had, they would have seen an odd table in the middle of the room, with a concave surface, narrowing at one end, where there was a drainage hole. A medical student might have recognized it as an autopsy table, if he was observant enough to look past the polished oak and the carvings of what appeared to be gargoyles on the thick legs.
At the center of the concave depression, there was a bundled-up object that occasionally, throughout the meeting, had twitched. Now Hargraves removed the covering to reveal the vampire beneath, naked, her mouth covered with duct tape, her hands and feet bound. She was short and blonde, and a little chubby. Fitzsimmons was pretty sure he’d seen her around the offices.
“What did she do?” he asked idly.
Peterson picked up the mallet and the wooden stake in front of him and said, “Rule number one, I think. Consorting with a human.” It really didn’t matter. The Rules were just an excuse, and most everyone knew it. Certainly no one on the Council had any illusions.
Peterson shrugged and put the point of the stake over the captive vampire’s heart. She was screaming at the top of her lungs through the gag, but they’d gotten so good at this that it came out as no more than a loud hum.
Peterson brought the mallet down without fanfare. The stake had been sharpened so that it slid easily between the vampire’s ribs and into her heart. The Council members watched as the life went out of her eyes. Blue blood welled up around the wooden stake and started to drain away.
They leaned over and sank their fangs into her soft body, tearing away mouthfuls of her flesh. Their faces took on a blue glow as the vampire blood covered them. Human blood was great, but vampire blood was addicting.
In the back of Fitzsimmons’s mind, he knew that they had gone over the edge, that vampires were intent on consuming each other. The Rules of Vampire, which had been created by Terrill to save their kind, were instead going to be their downfall.
Chapter 3
Bend, Oregon, was becoming a city––or so the residents told themselves. But to Terrill, it was still a quaint little town. It wasn’t so big that he could fail to notice the three black Cadillac Escalades that had begun following him around. They had windows with just enough tinting to allow a vampire to survive in the daylight.
But why would they be following him? As far as he knew, Horsham had been his last enemy, and Horsham was gone forever: finally and most definitely gone.
Terrill sighed. He’d been enjoying himself for the first time in ages. Sylvie really seemed to like him, though neither of them was brave enough to use the word “love” just yet. The word had almost slipped out of him a couple of times as they luxuriated on the grass in the afternoon sun, holding hands, her head on his chest where the silver cross was fused to his skin.
The wounds had healed around the cross, and it was simply part of him now. Occasionally, Father Harry would ask him to stand up and show his cross to the congregation, as if he was a prize bull. The congregation liked Father Harry enough that they were overlooking his increasingly bizarre sermons about demons and hellfire. After all, Father Harry was a bit of a miracle himself, as he’d been shot in the belly but survived the carnage that that maniac Horsham had inflicted on the police station.
The townsfolk accepted Terrill as an odd but likeable eccentric. He volunteered at the Catholic soup kitchen most days and had become a trusted friend and confidant to many of the homeless. Crazy or addled or drug addicted, it didn’t matter: he embraced them all.
He was loving life. Because it was life. He was alive, his heart was beating, and who would’ve ever thought that would happen? When the sun beat down on his head, at worst, it gave him a sunburn. He sometimes missed his old strength and speed, but he didn’t need it. He certainly didn’t need his ability to see in the dark, because most nights he was home in bed, with Sylvie.
He’d once been vampire, but no more. He was immortal no longer. He could die tomorrow, and it didn’t bother him in the least. He was content.
So why were they following him?
Terrill approached one of the Escalades at a stoplight, but the SUV sped away. Well, that’s fair, he thought. Throwing open the door wouldn’t have been healthy for the vampires inside. He’d wait until evening and see if they’d talk to him then.
He walked home most days. St. Francis, one of local Catholic churches, was downtown, and he and Sylvie had settled into a home on the west side. It was an outrageously expensive house for being so tiny, and it was a long stretch to call it a Craftsman-style cottage, but Sylvie loved it and that’s all that mattered to him. Terrill was wealthy beyond anyone’s imaginings––but even Sylvie only had clues about that.
He was ready to give all that wealth away. He was just trying to figure out how to go about it. Turned out that giving away money effectively was almost as complicated as earning it in the first place––not that he’d really had to work at it. Time had been on his side. “Compound interest is a vampire’s best friend” was the phrase that was often used, and Terrill believed he’d probably coined it himself, long ago, so long ago that he could barely remember it.
His memory of the long, bloody centuries was fading, thankfully. He was feeling more the age of his human body, in his mid-thirties, tall, lanky, and dark, and slowly gaining a potbelly from all the home-cooked meals. He’d noticed his first genuine gray hair a few weeks ago, and wrinkles and spots were appearing in strange places for no apparent reason.
Sylvie was teaching him modern ways. She was barely old enough to drink, though her working life had mostly been spent in one brewpub or bar after another. Her hair was glossy black and thick and curling, her eyes were wide and dark, her nose was long and narrow, and when you took her in parts, she should have been ugly, but she was gorgeous in an oddly put-together way.
She greeted him at the door, and he could tell from the look in her eyes that she’d been thinking about her sister and that she was going to ask him The Question. One thing about Sylvie: you never had to wait for her to get to the point.
“Have you found Jamie yet?” she said without preamble.
He wasn’t sure why she had such faith in him, faith that he could find her sister. Jamie was a vampire and he’d once been a vampire, and that was connection enough for Sylvie. But even more importantly, he was Jamie’s Maker. And it was true that he could probably guess some of her moves: she’d go somewhere that was mostly cloudy and overcast, she’d want to blend in, and she probably wouldn’t have taken public transportation, so she couldn’t have gone far.
Of course, she could’ve stolen a car and be all the way across the country for all Terrill knew, but he sensed that she was near––probably in Oregon or one of the neighboring states. She was a baby vampire, without a mentor, and she’d want to stay close to home.
But his real ace in the hole was his connection to the street people who passed through town. They had a tendency to keep moving and to be aware of all the hiding places. They went unnoticed and yet were everywhere, observing everything.
Grime had mumbled something about “I… ge… er…,” which Terrill had translated as “I�
�ll get her.” And that was good enough for Terrill.
Meanwhile, old Perry had made it his job to ask every transient who passed through St. Francis about Jamie, and they answered him when they wouldn’t have answered Terrill or Father Harry. No matter how much the two of them were respected, they weren’t of the brotherhood. Perry was a lifelong hobo and knew everyone.
Jamie’s looks––red-haired, freckled, and gorgeous––were unusual enough that Terrill thought there was at least a chance she’d be noticed, especially if she was trying to hole up in less-reputable places––and she was probably going to gravitate toward many of the same places where the homeless congregated.
Terrill snapped out of his reverie, aware that Sylvie was staring at him, waiting for his answer. “Not yet,” he told her. “The last time anyone saw her, she was heading south, so I’ve been asking a lot of questions about areas to the south of us. I don’t think she’d go too far south, though, because she’ll want to stay in the shade.”
“Let’s go,” Sylvie said. “We’ll head down Highway 97. Stop in all the little towns. Ask around.”
Terrill nearly laughed. Finding a vampire in the dark was nearly impossible even when you knew she was there! But he just shook his head. “Let’s wait until we get a sighting.”
“Harumph,” Sylvie snorted, and walked off to the kitchen to prepare dinner––which was about the best response Terrill could have expected.
He went to the picture window and pulled aside the curtains. A black Escalade sat in front of his house, as if inviting him to come out.
So he went.
Chapter 4
The SUV’s door flew open as Terrill walked down the front path. There was a woman with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for him. She wasn’t smiling; she wasn’t scowling. Her face was carefully neutral.
“Are you looking for me?” he asked.
“Yes, Terrill. We need to talk. Get in.” Her voice was deep and mellow and hypnotic. He almost obeyed without thinking, but with an effort, he pulled back.
“Stop it,” he said. “I know your tricks.”
“Of course you do,” she said. She frowned, and it was as if the skin of her face was feeling the force of frown muscles for the first time, as if it was virgin territory. “You are a vampire.”
“I was a vampire,” Terrill said.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “Once a vampire, always a vampire.” The frown remained on her face.
“Oh? You’ve been following me for the last few days. How do you think I walk around in the sunlight? You’re close enough now to hear the beating of my heart, to smell the blood coursing through my veins.”
She didn’t answer.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Suddenly, she became conciliatory. “I’m not your enemy, Terrill. I have nothing but respect for you and your views. In fact, I voted in favor of asking you to join the Council.”
Terrill didn’t trust this any more than he had her original no-nonsense approach. He just stared at her. For a moment, he had to struggle to remember what she was talking about. “The Council of Vampires?” he said aloud as the memory came back. He started laughing. That bunch of meddlers! He’d barely been aware of their founding and had pretty much ignored them ever since.
“Things have changed, Terrill,” the woman said. “My name is Clarkson, and I think you’d better listen to me.”
Something in her tone caught him short, and he stopped laughing.
“Get in the backseat,” she said.
To his surprise, he did. He didn’t think he’d been charmed, but he wasn’t absolutely certain. As the SUV pulled away from the curb, Terrill suddenly remembered that he was human and these were vampires, and he was completely defenseless. How interesting that I’m not afraid, he thought. He could die at any moment, but he felt calm, whereas all those centuries that he’d been immortal, he’d been afraid of losing his life. How very strange.
“You may not know it, Terrill, but your Rules of Vampire are now the law among our kind, enforced by the Council,” Clarkson said.
“The vampires I knew would never stand for that,” he said.
“The vampires you knew are mostly dead, many of them at the hands of the Council. We’re no joke, Terrill, whatever you might think.”
How ironic, Terrill thought. He’d first formulated the Rules of Vampire as a lark during World War II. Vampires had been disappearing at an alarming rate, so he’d tried to construct some guidelines for them to follow, to help them survive. But though they were called rules, they’d really always been suggestions:
Rule 1. Never trust a human.
Rule 2. Never leave the remains of a kill, or if you must, disguise the cause of death.
Rule 3. Never feed where you live.
Rule 4. Never create a pattern. Kill at random.
Rule 5. Never kill for the thrill. Feed only when necessary to eat.
Rule 6. Never steal in the short term; create wealth for the long term.
As if she could read his mind, Clarkson smiled. Again, the creases on her smooth face seemed almost unnatural. “We’ve come up with a few more since then, most of them just corollaries. All of them enforced, punishable by death.”
Terrill supposed it was possible. He had been in hiding for decades, living by a code that was even more severe than his original Rules, one that had made the Rules moot: he had refused to kill humans. He’d been out of the loop for a long time.
“You want me to join you?” he said.
“It has been decided by a vote of the Council,” Clarkson said.
“And if I refuse?”
She turned around in the front seat and her blue eyes sought his, making sure that he was paying attention. “You can’t refuse, Terrill. The Council has become all-powerful. Every vampire would turn against you––and those you love.”
They were pulling up in front of his house, and as the Escalade slowed, Clarkson’s eyes went to the kitchen window, where Terrill could see Sylvie whistling as she fixed dinner.
“But I am no longer vampire,” he protested. “Surely you can see that I’ll be of no use to you.”
“I’m sorry, Terrill. Truly, I am. But I’m afraid that if I returned and told the Council that you have miraculously turned human, they would be even more determined to have you in their power. You’d best return with me and make your case to the full Council.”
To his surprise, Clarkson let him get out of the SUV. She got out with him and stood next to him on the sidewalk. She was nearly as tall as he was, and her posture was impeccable. She might have been a Greek statue, pale and lovely in the moonlight. He glanced toward the kitchen window and saw Sylvie staring out at them.
“I would rather you came willingly,” Clarkson said. “I’ll give you a week. If you want to talk to me, I’ll be staying downtown at the Oxford. I hope you’ll make the right decision, Terrill. You…” Unbelievably, she blushed. “You’ve always been my hero.”
She got back into the Escalade and snapped an order at the burly driver, and they shot away.
Terrill walked slowly up the path. Sylvie was waiting at the door. She didn’t say anything; she just took him in her arms. She’d wait for him to explain if he wanted to, or let it go completely if he didn’t want to.
Later that night, it all poured out of him.
Chapter 5
England, 1250 A.D.
“I always called you a bastard, Terrill. I don’t know about the rest of these lads, but I never thought you were anything but a bastard. It’s not my fault if you didn’t take me seriously.”
Terrill stood in his soiled clothing in front of his resplendent friends, too shocked to move as they laughed.
“Tell you what,” Peter Martel continued, “if you want to buy us a round like you always did in the old days, we’ll let you sit down.”
The old days? Terrill wondered. He’d been drinking with these fellows only the week before. He’d be
en one of them… or so he’d always thought.
“I’ve bought you drinks every night of the week for years,” he said in a dull voice.
“Indeed. Why else do you think we associated with a bastard?” Martel asked. Everyone at the table laughed some more––and then, worse, they started talking about the tournament as if Terrill wasn’t there.
The Tournament of Chalize. He’d shown up at the castle for his placement, hoping for an early joust, thinking he might be able to win his favor back by winning the grand prize. Instead, the local authorities had asked him for the papers proving his nobility.
“Papers?” he’d repeated, not quite understanding. “You know who I am.”
“No, sir. We do not,” the fat man behind the table had said.
At this, Terrill had backed away, stunned. He had stumbled over a wooden plank and landed on his back in the mud. And he had heard laughter: laughter from servants who, only a short time before, wouldn’t even have dared to look him in the eye.
Now, he turned his back on his former friends and headed over to the stable. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find that his horse, William the Conqueror, was no longer there. “The duke’s widow took him away this morning,” said the stableboy. There was sympathy in the lad’s voice, the first sympathy Terrill had heard since he’d been turned out of his lodgings the day before.
It began to sink in. He was a bastard. He’d always been a bastard, but he’d also been the duke’s only male offspring, so he’d been indulged and coddled all his life. Oh, he hadn’t been allowed to live with the family; the duchess wouldn’t permit that. But other than that inconvenience, he’d never been without privilege. More importantly, he was realizing belatedly, he had never been without coin.
The privilege had meant nothing. The coin had meant everything.
Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I plan ahead? Terrill thought bitterly.
Because he had never had to plan ahead, he realized; he had always been provided for, his bad behavior always excused. He’d walked away from debts knowing that they would be paid.
The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 2): Rule of Vampire Page 2
