“What makes a vampire go savage?” Jerusa asked, breaking the long silence.
“It’s unknown to us exactly what the vampire spirit is,” Foster said after a moment of contemplation. “A virus? A fungus? Or is it really some intangible entity? What we do know is that it is sentient, at least somewhat.
“When the vampire spirit enters a person, it first hides. When that person dies, the spirit acts as a symbiotic organism, raising them from the dead and granting certain powers as long as it is fed fresh blood. But we are not impervious. Not immortal in a true sense of the word. More perpetual than anything else. Vampires heal exceptionally fast, but if the injuries are great enough, even our enhanced bodies will die. When the heart stops beating or the brain ceases to function, then the vampire spirit goes savage, and that sentient symbiotic entity changes into a parasitic monstrosity.”
“That’s what happened to Kole?”
“Yes. When your friend pulverized his heart — not an easy feat, I might add — he brought about the savage change.”
“Everything would have been fine had you and that boy just died,” Taos said. His hair fell loose about his stony, handsome face and his eyes burned like cold fire. “Because of you two and your strange friend, now Kole is out hunting, feeding, and growing stronger. It won’t be long before he begins to make other savages.”
A question burned in Jerusa’s mind. She knew she shouldn’t ask it, that she didn’t really want to know the answer. But she couldn’t contain it. “If a savage bites you, human or vampire, then you become savage regardless?”
The room fell silent. Even the rain seemed to hush its rattling outside.
“All but you, my dear,” said Shufah.
Jerusa saw the questioning in their eyes, but she had no answer for them. Only Silvanus knew for sure what had happened, but he had vanished, blinked out like a shattered light bulb. She wondered where he was and if he was okay. The savage blood he had drawn from her had obviously attacked his own system. She prayed silently that Silvanus had not turned savage too.
A deep weariness settled over Jerusa. Her limbs seemed to double in weight and for a moment, she feared some new change was overtaking her. Foster pressed his back to the wall and slid into a sitting position, his chin pressed to his chest, his head lolling from side to side.
A knowing smile touched Shufah’s mouth. “It is your first sunrise as a fledgling vampire,” she said. “Can you feel it? That great, burning eye, rising over the horizon?”
Indeed, Jerusa could feel it. The golden line of light pressed against the trees on the eastern side of the property. The leafy treetops, already bathing in a golden glow, sang in unheard voices, coaxing the sun to rise ever higher. The earth warmed and awakened beneath the racing sunlight, turning in a cadence rehearsed daily from the beginning of time.
Jerusa felt it all and more, just as she also sensed her own disconnection from it. These were matters of the day and she was now a creature of the night. She no longer had a place in this dance. She was an exile, a heretic of the light. And as the earth awakened under the golden gaze of the sun, it seemed all the power of the night, now flowing in her veins, evaporated like the glistening dew upon the grass.
Jerusa tried to shrug off this sedation, but it pulled at her with iron chains. She wondered why only she and Foster seemed affected. Shufah must have read the expression on her face.
“You are new in the blood, as is Foster,” she said, patient as a sage. “The sun calls you to rest. Give it time, young one. After a few months, the sun will no longer hound you into oblivion.”
Shufah went to Foster, who was in a sleep so deep he might well have been dead, scooped him up as though he were an infant and carried him to the far wall. She laid him out on his back then produced from the corner an unnoticed blanket made of thick black fabric. She dropped the blanket at Foster’s feet then came to retrieve Jerusa.
In Shufah’s arms, Jerusa could sense the great strength hiding within the tiny form. She wrapped her arms around Shufah’s neck and allowed her head to drift over to the warmth of Shufah’s chest.
“Come now, young one,” Shufah said. Her voice was as soothing as a lullaby. “We must all rest while the day is upon us. When the night comes again, we must be ready.”
“Ready for what?” Jerusa managed to ask.
“To flee, child.”
Shufah laid Jerusa next to Foster then turned her attention to Thad.
“Young man, I know that once we give in to rest that your instinct is going to be to escape.” She shook her head at him, not in an accusatory way, but imploringly. “This is ill advice. Your safety is dependent upon us now. Should you approach that door, I will hear it and I will kill you.”
Thad’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. It was clear this had been his intent and he seemed utterly shocked that she had pulled it from his mind.
Taos grinned, showcasing his fangs. “Not if I get to him first.”
Shufah shot Taos a scathing stare, but her eyes went gentle again when she turned back to Thad. “Believe me, I would find no pleasure in destroying you. If you hope for us to be friends, then do not test the courage of my convictions. When we rest, you should rest as well.”
Thad nodded, his eyes still wide and unblinking.
Suhail came over and lay down next to Jerusa. He turned his head to her and smiled. He was as handsome with his dark skin and glowing bronze eyes as Shufah was beautiful. Jerusa wondered how old the twins were and where they came from. Some Middle Eastern country, to be sure. Some ancient bible town, perhaps unknown to even the most informed of scholars. What had such beings experienced over the endless years? What wisdom and secrets might they possess? Jerusa wanted to reach out and touch Suhail’s fangs, to prick her finger on the deadly point, if only to prove this wasn’t a dream, but her arms now lacked the power to rise. Her eyes begged to close, but she resisted them with all her might.
Shufah lay next to her brother. “Come, Taos. Join us.”
Taos crossed his arms, a defiant smirk smeared across his face. “Sorry, but I must decline. I don’t trust the human.” He turned his poisoned gaze upon Jerusa. “And I’ll not join company with that. I will rest with my back to the door, if you don’t mind.”
Shufah held his gaze in silence for a long moment before she finally said, “As you wish, but as you slumber, be careful not to dream of betrayal.”
“Perish the thought,” Taos said. He turned, ascended the steps, and sat on the top riser with his back against the steel door.
Shufah glanced once again at Thad, who now lay curled in the corner in the fetal position, then jerked the heavy blanket up over Suhail, Jerusa, and herself, in one smooth motion.
The enveloping blackness covered Jerusa like magic waters. Her heart rate and breathing slowed to a level far below what any mortal could sustain. She sensed the sun peak over the treetops and the light settling on the ground felt like a weight to her soul. She closed her eyes, welcoming the weariness, begging for release from the day. Just before oblivion overtook her, Jerusa thought, for just a moment, that she felt Alicia reach through the blanket and caress her cheek.
But that was impossible.
Chapter Twelve
Vampires could dream. Jerusa found this out for herself. She yielded over to the gravity of her weariness, allowing it to pull her into its inky embrace. All ceased to be and she felt adrift in the void, careless, without hope or fear. How long she wandered through oblivion, she did not know.
She found herself standing in a sunlit opening, deep within a winter-touched forest. The air was bitterly cold, turning her breath into thick white plumes, the wind sharp as Death’s scythe, yet she seemed untouched by it all. She held her hand up as the snow danced about her and grasped the sunlight as if it were the hand of a long-absent friend. A man entered the clearing, his luminous green eyes alive with cheer. The man was tall like Thad, but had the face of Silvanus, and in her heart, she knew the man was both at the same time
.
She longed to rush to him, to embrace the man and cover him with kisses, but she found it impossible to move. The world changed around her. The circle of trees began to spin like some merry-go-round gone amok, until the snow-flecked trunks and leafless boughs bled together, creating a nauseating maelstrom. The sunlight fell into the vortex, bringing an endless black, but not an empty one. Voices, near and far, churned upon one another like the grinding of teeth.
Kole stepped from the spinning forest, his red-tinged eyes fastened to Jerusa. The gaping hole in his chest quivered as he walked. His lips curled back into a smile full of death and derangement. A guttural, churning groan fell from his mouth and from the emptiness beyond the vortex came countless answers.
Alicia appeared and placed her hands on Jerusa’s shoulders. She shook Jerusa while calling out her name over and over. Jerusa marveled at Alicia’s touch. I can feel her, she thought. I can’t believe this. I can hear her calling my name.
The emptiness shook with a great tremor and suddenly it all vanished.
Jerusa opened her eyes and found Foster hovering over her, shaking her by the shoulders.
“Wake up, for pity’s sake,” he said, though he looked barely awake himself.
The basement remained dark as night, however, Jerusa knew that the sun still ruled the sky. She could feel its weight pressing upon the Earth, willing her back into slumber. She pushed Foster back and sat up.
Shufah and Suhail stood at the base of the stairs with Taos close behind them. Foster sat back on his heels next to her, and the heavy breathing and thrumming heart told her Thad was in the corner behind her.
“What’s wrong?” Jerusa asked, but no sooner had that question left her lips than she heard.
Footsteps on the floor above. A familiar voice calling out shrill and scared.
“Jerusa,” Debra Phoenix called. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
“Oh my — ” Jerusa started to say, but Foster quickly shushed her.
“She cannot know we’re down here,” Foster whispered.
Jerusa’s mother tried the door to the basement, found it locked, and pounded on the wood in a panic. “Sweetheart, are you down there?”
Jerusa started to stand, but Foster grabbed her wrist.
“She won’t leave,” Jerusa whispered. “And if she does, it’ll be to go get the police. The window is broken, the house a mess. She’ll think the worst. Trust me. I have to answer her. It’s the only way.”
“You cannot go up,” Suhail said in hushed exasperation. “The sunlight will kill you and put the rest of us in danger.”
“Call her down to us,” Taos suggested. “She is a loud and shrill woman. I’ll make a short end of her.”
“Stay away from my mother.” She spoke a little too loudly and her mother stopped pounding on the door.
“Jerusa? Was that you? Honey, open the door.”
Jerusa turned to Shufah. “Let me go to her. Or let her come down here.”
“I can go up to her,” Thad said. “The sun won’t affect me. I can tell her you’re not here.”
“No, I don’t think she’ll buy that,” Jerusa said. “If she sees you and not me, she’ll assume you’ve done something to me.” She turned again to Shufah. “If you don’t want the police showing up here with the sun still up, then she needs to see that I’m okay.”
Shufah considered Jerusa’s proposal, then nodded her consent. “We’ll hide under the stairs.” She motioned for Suhail and Taos to squeeze into the tiny space beneath the risers. “Foster, grab the blackout cloth.”
Foster snatched up the heavy blanket and joined the huddle beneath the stairs.
Shufah turned her eyes on Thad. “Be calm, young man. I know that you want to flee, but stay true to us and afterward, I will call you friend.”
Thad nodded, though his face seemed unsure.
Shufah pulled the blackout cloth over top of them and the four vampires became one with the shadows.
Jerusa’s mother returned to pounding on the door.
“Will you open the doors for her?” Jerusa asked Thad. “I better stay down here in the dark.”
Thad climbed the stairs and after a bit of searching, located the release switch for the steel door. With a grunt, he heaved the heavy door upward to its hiding spot in the ceiling, disengaged the deadbolt in the oak door, and stood back as Jerusa’s mother wrenched it open.
“Where is my daughter?” she screeched. “What have you done to her?”
She pinned Thad to the wall with her twisted bony hand on his chest as though she might pull out his still-beating heart.
“Mother,” Jerusa called. “Leave him alone. I’m all right.”
Her mother released Thad and waded into the murky depths of the basement. Sunlight spilled down the stairway, not directly, but reflected from the walls and ceiling of the first floor, and Jerusa backed further into the shadows. She turned toward the wall for even the sight of the secondhand sunlight brought a queasiness to her stomach and a sharp pain behind her eyes.
“What is going on here?” her mother demanded. “Why are you down here in the dark? And why is that boy here? Were you two having … sex?” She whispered the last word as if uttered loud enough it would conjure Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt to do battle for the Smut Peddler of the Year Award.
“No,” Jerusa said, more embarrassed than outraged. “We weren’t doing anything like that.” Was a physical relationship even possible for her now? She didn’t feel any different, at least when it came to her attraction to Thad, or Silvanus, or, truth be told, Taos. She would ask Shufah some of the more intimate questions if they were ever alone together.
“Then why are you in the basement with that boy?” That boy. Only her mother could spin that phrase with such utter contempt.
“We were trying to sleep. You woke us up.” This would most likely be the only truth this conversation would produce.
“Turn on the lights. I want to see you.”
Jerusa sighed. “Thad, will you please turn on the lights and close the door?” Thad didn’t answer, but the fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life and a moment later, the heavy oak door closed with a bang.
Jerusa turned around. Her mother started to speak, to lay into her, but stopped with her mouth open, staring at Jerusa as though she were a stranger. Jerusa wanted to smile, to relish this little moment of silence, but her powerful ears caught the sound of feet sliding softly across the floor above her head.
It was Thad. He was upstairs and heading for the door.
The lock disengaged with a heavy click and the front door opened. Jerusa could see the blackout cloth stir ever so slightly beneath the stairs. They could hear it, too. But there was nothing to be done about it. None of them could chase Thad out into the sunlight.
“What have you done to yourself?” her mother asked. There was suspicion and shock in her tone, but no malice. “I’ve never seen you look this way before.”
Jerusa shifted side to side, unsure what to do with her hands. “Nothing. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your hair,” he mother continued, half exasperated. “Your skin. Have you had a spa treatment?”
“Don’t be silly.” The door to Thad’s Jeep slammed and the engine roared to life. Jerusa struggled to keep her face placid. “Mom, will you do me a favor? Go upstairs and tell Thad that I need him for something.”
This request seemed to snap her mother out of her awe.
“I want to know what’s going on here. Upstairs is a mess, the window is broken, and you’ve got yourself locked in the basement with some boy. I can’t believe you’ve done this to me. Staying out all night. I was worried sick.”
The Jeep’s tires churned up the gravel of the driveway. Her heart sank at the thought of what trouble this might bring.
“Are you listening to me?”
Jerusa looked at her mother, truly looked at her, allowing her vampire senses to paint the woman in more detail than she could imagine possible.
The tiny muscles of Debra Phoenix’s face seemed in constant motion beneath the chalky façade of makeup shellacked upon her skin. The veins in her neck throbbed irregularly. The threadlike blood vessels in her eyes reached out like groping tentacles clinging to her dull irises. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. Her perfume overwhelmed the room, even so, Jerusa could still smell the woman’s skin, her sweat, even her blood.
Alicia appeared in the room, but did not approach.
“I’m listening, Mother,” Jerusa answered, dropping her head a bit so as to hide her fangs. “Foster left the house in a mess. The window was broken, so Thad stayed over to make sure I was all right and we slept down here with the door locked.”
Her mother’s features softened. “This is silly. You should be home with me so that I can take care of you.”
“I know this is hard for you.” A sharp stab of guilt pierced Jerusa’s heart. She could see the anguish rolling in her mother’s face. “My life has changed. I need to be on my own for a bit.” She gestured to the house above. “Is it really so bad? It’s just a few miles away. It’s not like I’m moving out of state.”
“What about your medication?” her mother asked. “What if you get sick and I’m not around to take you to the hospital?” She was grasping now, looking for any place to snag the upper hand.
Jerusa touched her chest, relishing the beating of her borrowed heart. It belonged to her now as much as it ever had its original owner. Silvanus had given her something that no medication could hope to achieve, assuring that this heart would beat on for . . .
The thought of true eternity brought a shudder of panic.
Jerusa steadied her emotions. “I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about my medication anymore.”
She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Weariness rushed through her like poison. All she wanted was to climb beneath the blackout blanket with the others of her kind and nuzzle in the warmth of their immortal heat.
“What do you mean, don’t worry?” her mother said with a scoffing laugh. “Is some man in your life going to pay for your medication now?” A thought occurred to her and her eyes pressed into slits. “You’re not thinking of stopping you treatment, are you? Oh my god, you are.” She shook her head vigorously. “Why would you do something so foolish? No. I will not accept this. I won’t let you kill yourself.”
Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) Page 11
