by Steve Niles
At a sound in the hallway, Dane whirled.
“You must be Dane.”
The tall figure had a scar in the center of his forehead where a bullet had struck him, and his lower lip had been slashed through once. Still, he cut an imposing figure. Short blond hair was slicked back on his head. A black silk shirt, open to midchest, showed a muscular torso and broad shoulders. His eyes were a pale gray and without any warmth at all.
“I am Bork Dela. I’ve been expecting you.”
15
“THE HEADSMAN, in the flesh,” Dane replied. “I’ve been looking for you.” Dane wasn’t about to let on the surprise he felt about Dela already knowing who he was.
“You certainly didn’t show up here by accident. I myself try to stay off the beaten path.”
“You succeed admirably,” Dane said. Since the voices hadn’t recurred, he was convinced now that they had been a trick of Dela’s, meant to freak him out. He didn’t even want to give the vampire the satisfaction of knowing he had reached Dane. “But you’ve been making a nuisance of yourself in town. Created quite a stir with all of us.”
“Is that why you’ve come to Savannah, Dane?”
“I’m astonished that you’ve heard of me.”
“I make it a point to stay current. I understand the low country is pretty far from your usual stomping grounds.”
“You were drawing unnecessary attention to us, to our kind.”
No reaction. Dela merely stood in front of Dane, apparently unarmed. Dane knew he should do everything in his power to kill him right now. But something about the vampire’s approach made him want to continue the conversation, to find out why Dela had been so blatant, so out there.
“So. Here I am,” Dela said, as if reading Dane’s mind. When Dane didn’t respond, he continued. “I take it you…disapprove of my activities?”
“Of course,” Dane said. “Not only were you killing indiscriminately and kidnapping for no apparent purpose, but you could have exposed us all.”
At that, Dela laughed. His accent sounded only vaguely Continental, as if he had been living in the United States for decades. “Those philosophies you cling to, Dane. So outmoded. Hiding from humans? Indiscriminate killing? Kidnapping?” He shook his head. “Dane, you sound as if you believe them to be our equals. Like they’re deserving of any consideration whatsoever. Do you know what they are to me? Containers. The same as a bottle or can is to a human. They hold the blood, confine it, keep it fresh and hot. Other than that, they are utterly worthless.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree with that. We were human once. We haven’t left it all behind.”
“We were apes once, too. Does that mean we cling to our ape-ness? Do we celebrate ape culture? Or do we move on, embrace the way we’ve improved over our earlier, primitive selves?”
“That is not at all the same.”
“Isn’t it? Or is it just that you want to keep deluding yourself into thinking that they’re different?”
“I’m not the one who’s deluded.”
Dela grinned, wicked teeth bared. “By the way, I believe you have something of mine. I’ve been wondering where you put her.”
“You mean, Ananu?”
“She had a name? How adorable.”
“They all have names, Bork.”
“Maybe. That doesn’t mean we have to use them.”
Dane felt the anger now simmering inside him, heading toward a boil, dispelling whatever fear he once felt. In his surprise, he had almost forgotten why he had come. “I use them.”
“Pfft, no matter. We’ve already determined that you are nothing but a fool. Look at where you are standing, Dane. At what’s behind you. That room is just one of my storage facilities. Things are going on all around you that you can’t even hope to comprehend, as long as you remain mired in the past.”
“Murder and kidnapping are hardly revolutionary.”
“Like I said, you’ll never understand. Big things, too grand for you to see with your blinders on. Why, you probably still think the attack on Barrow was a mistake.”
“It was.”
Dela barked a laugh. “See? Barrow was nothing. Compared to what’s going on up north today? A street scuffle, nothing more.”
Dane wondered if Dela had meant to say that, but he couldn’t think of any subtle way to wring more information from him. “So what’s going on? Why don’t you tell me?”
“If you hadn’t blinded yourself, you could have already seen. If you didn’t side with idiots you might even have been invited. Paradise on earth, for those who are worthy of it. You do have a reputation, Dane, I’ll give you that much. I’ve heard you’re a tough one. But I’ve also heard you’re a sympathizer. Bottom line: no one trusts you.”
Dane’s anger flared, reaching the critical stage. “Ananu trusts me. You raped her, got her pregnant? You’d have killed her if I hadn’t come along.”
“Perhaps,” Dela said. “Or perhaps I’d have shipped her out, like the rest. I do feel bad, honestly. The same way I’d have felt, back in the old days, about kicking a puppy.”
Enough. Dane let the rage take him over.
Instead of answering, Dane charged, his right hand clawing at the other vampire’s face, his left scooping up the end of the club he had left by the door.
Slamming into Dela, his momentum carried them both out into the hall and across it, where Dela’s back hit the wall. Dela snarled and caught Dane’s face in his hands. Dane wrenched it away. He jabbed the club into Dela’s ribs.
Dela grunted in pain, doubling over the weapon. Pressing his advantage, Dane raised it high and swung down, an arc that should have plowed through Dela’s skull.
But Dela wasn’t there any longer. He had moved faster than Dane’s eye could follow. Somehow Dela had gotten behind him. Sharp claws dug at Dane’s throat, strong fingers squeezing the veins and muscles of his neck. Dane tried to swing the club behind him, but it was too awkward from this angle.
Instead, he dropped it and lurched backward, driving Dela into the doorjamb. The fingers on his neck loosened and Dane did it again, breaking Dela’s grip.
Once again, Dela moved too fast to see. The vampire must have picked up some occult tricks over the years. Either he truly moved with preternatural speed, or he was able to temporarily cloud Dane’s vision. The result was the same. He struck Dane a glancing blow on the cheek with a fist that felt like stone, then he vanished again, appearing on Dane’s other side, hitting him in the temple. Sparks filled Dane’s eyes.
Dela struck again, vanished, struck.
None of the blows were, by themselves, enough to do serious damage. But one after another after another, they started to wear Dane down. Dizziness overtook him. He stumbled, ran into a wall. Dela kept up the attack, and Dane knew he was bleeding from at least a dozen wounds. The fresh blood pooled in the meat locker offered salvation, but he couldn’t get to it.
He pictured Ananu, rolled into a pathetic ball on the floor of the warehouse, whimpering with terror when he approached her.
The image renewed him, at least for the moment. It wouldn’t last long.
Sensing another attack from behind, Dane ducked beneath Dela’s blow and snatched the club from the floor. As he rose, he spun around, swinging the club in a wide circle with himself at its center. The branch struck something solid, and Dela cried out in pain.
Dane jabbed the club at the same spot and hit Dela again. He kept it up. Dela couldn’t dodge away as long as the blows came fast enough. Finally, Dane had pinned Dela against the corridor wall with the branch held under his throat, pressing in.
“You…don’t think you can change anything, do you…? You’re…pathetic, Dane.”
“Me? I’m not the one assaulting women that I believe aren’t even on my evolutionary level. You disgust me, Dela.” He gave another shove with the branch, then tossed it aside. He needed to use his hands, needed to feel Dela, not part of a tree.
Dela raised a hand to ward him off and Dane grabb
ed it, fury engulfing him at the cold touch of the vampire’s flesh. “Humanity wouldn’t have you!” he shouted.
Dela tried to yank his hand away, but Dane caught him at the shoulder as well. He hurled Dela to the ground, still holding shoulder and wrist. The vampire glared up at him with sudden terror blossoming in his gray eyes. The sight turned Dane’s stomach. He pressed his foot against Dela’s neck, pushing him away, pulling on the shoulder and wrist at the same time. Dela clawed uselessly at Dane’s boot.
Dela screamed as the tissue tore. His shirt, already ripped in the battle, turned red at armpit and shoulder. Dane kept up the pressure. He wanted to literally tear Dela in half with his bare hands.
He couldn’t quite accomplish that, but when he felt Dela’s arm loose in its socket he knew he could come close. He gave another, harder shove with his foot and tugged on the arm with every ounce of strength he could muster.
The arm tore from the socket with a wet, ripping sound. Blood jetted against the wall. Dela’s shriek rattled doors, his feet kicking the floorboards.
Dane threw the arm to the ground. Spitting like a wild beast, Dela charged him, lopsided, blood spraying.
Dane dropped him with a stiff arm to the throat. Dela fell onto his back, and Dane grabbed his right ankle.
“I don’t understand why you would do the things you’ve done,” Dane said. Dela frantically clutched at a broken floorboard as Dane gave his leg a furious twist, wrenching it from the hip. “Tell me why!”
Dela shrieked again. Blood soaked through Dela’s black pants, pattering on the floor like a sudden cloudburst. “Why?” Dane shouted again, giving a final yank on the leg.
It came off in his hands, held close to Dela only by his blood-saturated pants. Dane released it. Dela writhed in pain, slamming his one remaining hand, kicking his left foot. He ranted but Dane couldn’t understand his words.
Still in fury’s horrific embrace, Dane straddled Dela. “You still haven’t told me WHY!” he shrieked. Dela snapped his fangs but Dane easily avoided them. He bent forward, reached down, grabbing Dela’s head in both hands and planting a booted foot squarely on the vampire’s chest, pinning him to the floor. “You don’t deserve to have ever been human!”
Straightening with one quick smooth motion, throwing his hands toward the ceiling, Dane heaved Dela’s head from his shoulders.
The scream died in Dela’s throat only as his neck split, vertebrae snapping, muscles separating. Beneath Dane’s foot, the body jerked a few times, then went still.
In his hands, the head snapped and bit, eyes glaring into Dane’s with utter hatred.
Breathing heavily, nearly spent, Dane started to toss the head aside, then decided against it. He twined his fingers through Dela’s hair and walked through the house, locating each meat locker–style room and checking to make sure Ananu wasn’t there. Empty.
Still carrying the head—now lifeless, eyes glazed—Dane made his way outside and back down the path to the pier where he had left AJ’s Zodiac boat.
He debated for a moment. Would Ananu want to see the head of her tormentor, or not? Probably not. Eventually, he swung the head in a circle a few times like a hammer thrower, then released.
The head sailed out over the Stygian water, vanishing in the night. Dane never even heard the splash.
Steering the little boat out to sea, using his free hand to release a flare gun from its watertight box, Dane’s arms started to shake. He felt a certain grim satisfaction at Dela’s destruction, but he was troubled by the depth of his own murderous rage.
Maybe Bork Dela, Marlow, and their kind were right after all.
Maybe when he became a vampire, Dane left the last vestiges of his humanity behind. Had he just been fooling himself for all these years? Was he the monster they all said he should be—the monster he should embrace? Dane had been so sure of himself up until now, of his position, a moral gray area, but suddenly he felt confused.
He headed away from the island, away from the relative stability of land into trackless water. Into the dark. Into the black uncertainty of eternal night.
The flare he fired arced high into the air, but its light couldn’t seem to reach into his soul at all.
16
THE FIRST DAYS after being killed had been excruciating for Dane.
Every muscle in his body ached. He could barely stand up. His guts were twisted in knots. He felt like an addict going cold turkey, although he couldn’t quite fathom from what.
Marlow dropped in from time to time, and when he left the little room where he kept Dane, he locked the door behind him. With each visit, he shared a little more information about what he had done to Dane, what Dane was becoming. Dane didn’t know it at the time, but Marlow had turned many people, almost always men, largely because he hoped to create a kind of street gang like the one he had once been a lowly member of.
On the third day, he came to visit Dane bearing a paper bag. The two talked—Dane demanding answers, Marlow responding with vague generalizations. The whole time, the bag twitched in his hands. Finally Dane, hunched over on the bed he had been provided, arms wrapped around his belly, asked what was in it.
“Oh, yes, my apologies,” Marlow said. “This is for you.” He handed over the bag.
Dane took it, unfolded the top where Marlow had been crushing it, and looked inside.
The bag contained insects in wide variety, some content to lie on the bottom, others climbing the sides, one beetle spreading wings and flying toward the light as soon as Dane opened it. Crickets, cockroaches, ants, some spiders, and another beetle with an iridescent green carapace. Others he couldn’t identify.
His stomach clenched. He thought he might be sick. “Why…?” he began.
Marlow simply looked at him, smiling.
Dane looked in again. His stomach lurched. A cricket jumped against the side of the bag. Dane watched it. Its legs were powerful, its body thick and sturdy.
Dane reached inside, pinched the cricket between two fingers, and drew it out.
Marlow watched him.
Holding the cricket close to his face, Dane smelled it. He had never smelled a cricket before, or any insect, for that matter. It smelled a little like freshly cut grass, but with a hint of a meaty undertone.
Barely realizing what he was doing, he put the cricket’s head in his mouth, then pushed it in a little farther. The cricket wiggled in his fingers, trying to escape. Dane bit down. Cricket blood washed over his tongue.
Delicious.
He finished the cricket and reached in again, scooping out a small handful of insects. Without even looking, he popped them into his mouth and chewed.
He couldn’t remember such a heavenly meal.
“It’s a phase,” Marlow said. “It will pass soon, and you’ll move on to more interesting feedings.”
Dane didn’t answer. That beetle was somewhere in the room, and he wanted it.
His first kill, under Marlow’s close supervision, had been a young woman with hair the color of corn silk.
They found her walking by herself on a quiet street, after dark, carrying a basket of flowers. “It’s like she’s looking for you,” Marlow whispered in Dane’s ear. “Or hoping you’re looking for her.”
“She is quite lovely,” Dane said.
“I suppose,” Marlow answered curtly. He seemed to have very little interest in women, for any purpose. “You know what you need to do.”
Dane hesitated. Hunger gnawed at him, but Marlow had made it clear that the bugs would no longer suffice.
He needed blood, fresh blood.
Without it Dane would weaken, wither, experience incredible pain. Eventually he might die, but that wasn’t certain. He might also live for a thousand years, racked by hunger, before he did.
Finally, Marlow shoved Dane’s shoulders, forcing him out of the alley. The startled woman raised a white-gloved hand to her mouth.
Dane knew he had to act quickly now. He tried to smile reassuringly. “Good evening, madam,
” he said as he approached her.
She backed away a step and he lunged, catching her as she tried to run. He clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, and threw his other arm around her waist. She writhed and kicked, but he dragged her into the darkness of the alley. As Marlow had shown him, he used her hair, knotted around his fist, to yank her head back and expose the curve of her throat.
Her eyes pleaded for mercy. He offered none.
When he had feasted—the blood so rich and satisfying, the finest meal he had ever had—Marlow made him sever her head and leave the body in the alley. Otherwise, he warned, she would become undead, and she would be Dane’s responsibility. Since Dane still didn’t know his own way around his new world, he couldn’t take on another.
Well fed, he slept for hours the next day. But those eyes, wide and desperate, haunted him that day and every one to follow.
On the night that Marlow told him they would be leaving New York—Marlow had taken it in his head that he wanted to spend some time in the Balkans, the legendary home of the nosferatu—Dane went out to hunt by himself. Instead of feeding, however, he went to three different streets and stood in the dark, outside three homes.
The first was the home of his parents. He watched the windows, catching occasional glimpses of his mother moving from room to room in desultory fashion. He had stopped here from time to time since Marlow had turned him, and she had always seemed the same, as if losing a son (and worse, losing him with no word, no answers to the questions that must have tormented her) had stolen away her energy, her life, as surely as if he had drained her blood himself. His father passed by the parlor window once and stopped, staring outside, like he sensed Dane’s presence. But Dane stayed in the shadows, confident in his invisibility to them.
His next stop was outside the house of Vanessa Steward, a young lady he had courted. He had not been able to bring himself to look upon her since that fateful night, but decided he couldn’t leave the country without a final glimpse. Vanessa was slender but strong, with skin like fine porcelain, a firm jaw, eyes that flared like a torch shielded by panes of pure emerald, and hair that cascaded around her face and down her back in copper ringlets. Her curtains were drawn when he got there, and he waited as long as he dared. Once all the lights inside had been extinguished, he gave up in the sad certainty that she would not show herself until morning.
