“Good,” Michael said. “Just as I wanted.”
They stood in the middle of the homeless men’s hideaway and stared at each other.
Again, Michael held out his arms, and this time Terrill hugged him. “You left me alone for a long time,” he said into his Maker’s shoulder. “None of the other vampires had the slightest notion of what I was trying to do.”
Michael let him go and stepped back. “What did you expect? None of them have the experience we have. Most of them won’t feel what we feel for a thousand years yet.”
“Horsham never did,” Terrill said quietly.
“That was disappointing, I admit,” Michael said. “It’s not just about age, apparently.” He sat down in one of the wicker chairs and looked around. “So this is where your progeny is hiding?” he said, sounding curious. “Well, we’ve lived in worse places in our time, haven’t we?”
Terrill could only vaguely remember those earlier years. When you became a vampire, you forgot being human, and it seemed that the opposite was true, too… though as far as he knew, he alone had made the change from vampire to human. Or am I the only one? he thought, looking at his Maker. “How did you get here in the daylight?” he asked.
“I have found that the older I get––thousands of years older than any other vampire I know of––the more I can tolerate the sun, though I must still be careful,” Michael said. “I have to congratulate you, Terrill. I never even thought about becoming human again. I was simply trying to learn to be a more human vampire.”
“It wasn’t what I set out to do,” Terrill said. “It just happened.”
“No. It wasn’t by mistake.” Michael sounded strong, confident, and inspiring, like the Alpha vampire he had been of old. “You set out to live a moral life, and the moral life came to you. I always thought religion was a bunch of hoo-ha, but maybe there is something to it.”
“Not religion,” Terrill said, “but what religion teaches.”
Michael stared at him as if to say, I don’t understand. Then he shrugged. “I wanted to tell you, I really like your Rules of Vampire.”
Terrill blushed. “I just codified what you and I always talked about.”
“Nevertheless, very clever.”
Terrill settled into one of the other chairs and they sat companionably for a while. Michael picked up one of Jamie’s dresses off the floor of the hideaway and sniffed it.
“I met Jamie, you know. I liked her,” he said. “Even as a vampire, she’s got some of her soul left. I’m beginning to believe that the stronger the soul a human has, the more likely that as a vampire, they will behave decently. Maybe that’s been our problem all along: we’re Turning the dregs of humanity, and thus they become the dregs of vampire society.”
Again they sat in companionable silence. How strange, Terrill thought. It’s just like old times, even though it’s been hundreds of years since we last saw each other.
But things had changed, and they couldn’t afford to simply sit around. Terrill cleared his throat. “They’ll be expecting me back,” he said, but what he really wanted to say was, Why are you here, Michael? After all this time, why are you here?
“So the Council of Vampires has finally approached you,” Michael said, and the tone of his voice made it clear he was at last getting down to business.
“Finally?” Terrill echoed.
“It was inevitable. I’ve been waiting for it. If only you hadn’t been so damn good at hiding yourself, it would’ve happened a long time ago. Even I lost you for a time. If it wasn’t for Horsham, you might still be in hiding.”
“You want me to join the Council?” Terrill asked.
“Yes,” Michael said, “but not for the reasons they think. They’ve taken your Rules of Vampire and perverted them. What you and I never realized is that to those without a soul, without a smidgen of conscience, the Rules are only legalisms, excuses to manipulate others. Vampires have always avoided giving such powers to other vampires––but the Council has grown so strong that they’re slowly taking over.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Terrill asked. “If they enforce the Rules, how can that be a bad thing?”
“Rule Five,” Michael intoned. “Never kill for the thrill. Feed only when necessary to eat.”
Terrill nodded.
Michael raised his eyebrows as if to say, See the problem? “What does that mean, exactly? It’s a judgment call––and if you have no judgment, then anyone can be guilty of breaking Rule Five, and anyone can be innocent of breaking it, too.”
“True,” Terrill conceded.
“Or take Rule Four: Never create a pattern. Kill at random,” Michael continued. “Again, what does that mean? What is a pattern? What is random?” He waved his hand in the air. “Any of the Rules can be interpreted in any way the enforcer wants. You and I understand what these Rules mean, because you and I care what they mean––we want them to work. They come from inside us; they’re not enforced from the outside. Without that inner guidance––what humans call ethics––the Rules don’t mean anything. Worse, they can be perverted to evil ends.” Michael laughed ruefully. “And we vampires don’t need any excuses for that.”
Michael stood up and waited for Terrill to stand as well. “You’re the only one who can stop them,” he said gravely.
“What can I do?” Terrill said. “I’m only human.”
“Well… about that.”
Terrill felt a chill. “No,” he said.
“You can’t fight them as a human. Only as the old Terrill, the most powerful living vampire, can you fight them.”
“Don’t you mean second-most powerful vampire?”
Michael smiled at him. “I wonder. And as far as they know, I’m dead. There is no way around it: you must become vampire again. Vampire… and something more. I’ve been researching this for centuries, Terrill, and I now believe that you were not the first to have made such a conversion. Long, long ago, there was another. The other vampires couldn’t stand to see it, and they tried to Turn him back. But he emerged as something different: a hybrid, stronger than both species. He kept his humanity, he could walk in the daylight, but he had all the powers of a vampire. Only thus can you defeat them.”
No, Terrill thought. I’d rather die.
“You have no choice, Terrill,” Michael continued sternly. “They’ll force you to join them in any event. But you’ll be powerless, a figurehead––the great Terrill, the Maker of the Rules of Vampire, giving his approval to all of the Council’s actions.”
Terrill shook his head, still resistant. There was another option, and he was prepared to take it. He could give up his life and be thankful for the time he’d been granted. He was mortal. He never wanted to be vampire again.
Michael watched him sadly. “Don’t you understand? The Council will take Sylvie. That’s their edge. They know that you love her. You’re human now, Terrill. If you were vampire, you might be able to walk away. But not now––not from the woman you love.”
So it was that Terrill gave up his life a second time.
Chapter 12
Stuart figured out what he was pretty quickly. When he walked out of his house the next morning into the sunlight, his skin started crinkling and turning black, and then the pain hit and he dove back through the doorway with a yelp, startling his parents, who were sitting at the breakfast table.
He got up, hiding his face, and yelled, “I’m going upstairs to play video games!”
In his room, he watched his blackened, blistered skin slowly smooth out and return to a whitish hue––paler than he remembered, but normal-looking enough. It took longer and was more painful that he would’ve thought. In the movies, the vampires just sort of reverted. You didn’t see the pain or the time it took. And you couldn’t tell from watching movies how strongly the bloodlust would overtake you.
Thank God he was a big horror movie fan, though. It surprised him, how easily he accepted what had happened to him. Maybe thanking God wasn’t right.
Maybe he should be thanking the Devil. In any case, Stu readily accepted his new condition––no, he reveled in his new condition.
He sat there on his bed, getting hungrier and hungrier. He idly wondered if he should go downstairs and… well… eat his parents. Then he pondered why he would consider doing such a thing and feel so little guilt.
He also discovered that all his old doubts were gone: Was he good-looking enough, smart enough, and cool enough? Was he going to flunk algebra? Was he going to be able to find a girl to go to prom with who measured up to his standards––and those of his friends? With the disappearance of these doubts, Stuart’s conscience also seemed to fade. It was more a logistical problem, this eating of parents, than a moral problem. He needed a home base to hide out in during the day and his parents were paying the rent, so he’d let them live.
At sunset, Stu headed out the front door without a word. He spent the hours of darkness exploring his new abilities. He found that he could scoot up to the mansions on the hills above town without being seen and look in the windows at the popular rich girls as they undressed, and they couldn’t see him.
He got within inches of a number of pedestrians, who also couldn’t seem to see him if he didn’t want them to. It was a matter of moving away from where their eyes went and into the places where their eyes didn’t go. He could smell their blood, and some of them were sweet and some were sour and some were diseased, and others were just begging to have their blood sucked.
He was quick and silent, and when he idly wished he could move a boulder to get a better look at Sandra Carpenter as she practiced her cheerleading moves in the nude, he tried it and found he was able to lift it out of the way with ease.
At four in the morning, his hunger overwhelmed him, and when he stumbled across Jim Harker walking home from a bar, he grabbed the old man and dragged him into the bushes. When his victim began to shout, Stuart grabbed him by the throat and crushed his windpipe.
As he sucked the dead man’s blood, Stuart regretted killing him so quickly. He’d gotten a hint of a taste of living blood, and it had been far tastier than what this corpse provided.
Next time. There are going to be many next times, he thought with satisfaction.
The next day, he slept in, ignoring his father’s reminder that he needed to find a summer job and not laze around the house all day. He did laze around the house all day, and when his father came home that afternoon and started to reprimand him for it, Stuart simply looked him in the eye and the human stuttered to stop and backed away.
Stuart waited near the window, watching for the sunlight to fade. It seemed to take forever, but finally the rays coming through the window lost their sting. He got up, got dressed, and headed out the door before his parents could see him.
He repeated many of the activities he’d engaged in the night before, but he was already losing interest in the girls his own age. He wanted someone more like that woman––that vampire––Jamie. Someone mature and sexy and willing. She’d led him on all evening there on the beach, and when she’d tried to slow him down, it had made him angry and he’d tried to force her.
He admitted that to himself. As a vampire, he could see that he’d been a weak human. He had deserved to be taken down. He shuddered to think what would have happened if those two cops hadn’t come along. He’d be dead meat, just like old man Harker, whose dull eyes had become even duller as he died.
Stuart was, if anything, hungrier than he’d been the night before, but again he saw it as a logistical problem. Killing citizens like Harker, who was a pharmacist as well as a drunk and pretty well-known around town, was going to be noticed.
He wandered down to the beach where, during the summer, the homeless gathered like flies. He picked off an old bag lady who had wandered away from the others and sucked her dry. She tasted slightly better than Harker had, but only because she was still alive while he was draining her.
As the blood flowed down his throat, Stuart remembered leaving Harker’s body looking almost untouched by the side of the road, and it occurred to him that in the movies, the dead sometimes came back. When he was done with the old lady, he idly twisted her head, tore it off, and threw it into the bushes. Let her try to come back from that!
By the third night, Stuart was bored. And he was lonely.
He visited his friends, one by one. He found them in bed and crawled in with them. Pete was properly freaked out and tried to smash his face in. He was the strongest guy Stuart knew, but he was like a little child compared to Stuart. Stuart left him dead, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling, a look of disgust on his face.
Greg screamed like a little girl and almost slithered away, he was so small and wiry, but Stuart caught him crawling out the window and bit into his thigh, and found that he could drain a human from any part of their body. When he was finished, he picked Greg up and arranged him on the bed, glassy eyes staring in horror.
Jimmy woke up and then just froze. When Stuart started sucking on his neck, Jimmy said quietly, “Please don’t.” Stuart left him faceup on his bed with a puzzled expression on his dead face.
All three of them were waiting for him when he went out the next night, and he took them down to the beach, where they each picked off a homeless person. Stuart decided to go upscale and grabbed a tourist. Her blood was clean and fresh, and he knew that his homeless-eating days were over.
They piled into Stuart’s pickup and went roaring down the coastal highway. All three of his progeny were still hungry, so when they saw the three hitchhikers, they stopped.
One of the vagrants got away, but Stuart wasn’t worried. Who was going to believe an old bum, anyway? Especially if he started shouting about vampires and stuff.
His buddies all stayed at Stuart’s place the next day. His parents didn’t object. They seemed to be afraid of him.
Stuart loved that.
Chapter 13
Terrill stood at the center of the enclosure, his eyes closed. He could sense his Maker––who was destined to become his Maker yet again––stepping up behind him and felt him gently lift the collar of Terrill’s shirt. Michael’s fangs went in smoothly––no other vampire had had so much practice––and Terrill’s life drained away.
His last thoughts were Will I still be human? Or will I be vampire?
And then he died a second time.
#
Terrill sat up, and it was clear from Michael’s startled reaction that he hadn’t been out for long. He didn’t remember any dreams or nightmares. It was as if he’d simply closed his eyes.
He was in pain. He could feel the outlines of the cross fused to his chest, and he lifted his shirt to see his flesh blooming bright red around its contours.
Michael looked surprised. “Interesting. But maybe it’s for the best, Terrill. It will be a constant reminder that you are like no one else, living or dead.”
Terrill almost couldn’t speak, he was in so much pain. He stood, lowered his shirt, and put his hand to his neck, his fingers feeling the two puncture wounds. He turned up the shirt’s collar.
“Now,” Michael said. “Here’s what you must do.”
#
“She isn’t here,” Terrill said when he finally emerged from the hideaway.
Sylvie looked disappointed. He’d called her on his cellphone and told her to come and get him. The plan to avoid the Council vampires by sneaking Jamie out of the other side of the thicket was useless for now.
“Should we wait for her?” Sylvie said worriedly.
“I’m not sure she’ll want to see us. If she sees us waiting, she might not appear at all. No, I think we’ll have to surprise her.” Sylvie didn’t seem to notice how distracted he was.
The two Escalades rolled up. The lead SUV’s passenger-side window, which was facing away from the sun, slid down. Clarkson motioned for Terrill to come over.
“No luck?” she asked.
“She was here recently,” he said. Clarkson’s blank stare made him want to expla
in more than he needed to. “I could tell; there were women’s clothes all over the place. Anyway, she was here.”
“Well, on a day like this, she’d better be under shelter. Still… maybe she’s moved up in the world again. You know, from homeless to whore.”
Terrill saw Sylvie wince. “That was uncalled for,” he said.
Clarkson looked contrite, but she didn’t apologize. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“You said you’d give me two more days. We’ll ask around; we’ll come back tomorrow; we’ll drive around and see if we don’t catch a glimpse of her. It’s not like the town is so big that it’s impossible to track her down.”
After Clarkson assented to their plan, Terrill and Sylvie drove down every road in Crescent City more than once, but found no sign of Jamie.
They waited until noon the next day, then swooped down on the hideaway and repeated what they’d done the day before. This time, Clarkson questioned why Sylvie was driving away.
“I don’t want to spook Jamie,” Terrill said.
Clarkson glanced at the two huge black SUVs and shook her head. “You’re up to something, but whatever it is won’t work. You’re coming back to London with me. I’ll give you one more day.”
Sylvie was getting more and more anxious. They spent another day driving up and down the roads, as if they expected Jamie to magically appear. Since the sun was shining brightly, that seemed unlikely, but Terrill didn’t say anything, because Sylvie seemed to need to be doing something, anything, to find her sister.
He grunted a couple of times when they drove directly into the sun, and she glanced at him curiously. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Must be something I ate.”
She accepted that explanation. Terrill had still been trying to learn what, when, and how to eat human food, and sometimes he’d gotten it wrong. A little too much grease or a little too much spice, and his human stomach had rebelled.
The Vampire Evolution Trilogy (Book 2): Rule of Vampire Page 6
