Immortal Remains 2 - 30 Days of Night

by Steve Niles

  And he saw and knew

  —Lilith taunting Stella even as she handed over Eben’s ashes, and Stella’s response—a jacket full of explosive devices left behind, almost finishing Stella on the spot—

  —Enok, his face lined and cruel, approaching Lilith, young and beautiful, on a cobblestone road, centuries ago, then clutching her arms, drawing her into a foul embrace, his breath hot and rank on her, and then the tearing, gnashing of his teeth—

  —just a moment ago, the vampire’s teeth on her side, the sensation as teeth sank in and ripped the flesh from her body—

  —six small girls, carrying her weak and wounded form into a cool, dark room—

  —feeding, hundreds of years, thousands of victims, enough blood to drown cities—

  —Vicente’s touch, his hands rough, calloused, intimate at times and casually violent at others—

  —Enok again, tall and thin, with broad shoulders and a sunken chest, his cheeks hollow, his eyes bulging, ears rising to points on top, surrounded by a miasma of death and decay, possessing strength beyond reckoning—

  —vampires bowing before her, Mother Blood—

  —Enok laughing at that appellation, angry that she would seek power and influence for herself that rightfully belonged to him—

  —the world as Enok envisioned it, vampires overrunning humans, emerging in the night to slaughter and burn, and more places like this one, where humans were kept like cattle, a food supply. Earth awash in blood and fire, smoke graying the sky, hiding the stars—

  Do it.

  “What?” He said it out loud, then caught himself.

  Bite. You must. Or they will know.

  Know what?

  Why you are here.

  I can’t.

  Little Eben Olemaun, it is nothing I have not felt a thousand times over.

  “Go on, Charles.” Sarah’s voice surprised him. She regarded him strangely. He didn’t know how long he had stood there, communing mentally with Lilith. He must have looked crazy.

  Like that’s anything different around here, Eben thought.

  Do it, Eben. While there is still time.

  Don’t overthink it, Stella had said to him on more than one occasion. The truth was, throughout their marriage and in their professional life, and now in their new state of being, he’d been the one likely to walk impulsively into a situation and then hesitate, playing out options in his mind and trying to choose the best course of action. Stella worked those questions out ahead of time, but in the thick of it she acted fast and decisively.

  Well, he was in this now. He swallowed back bile. He tried to imagine the sensation.

  Don’t overthink it.

  He took a quick, deep bite.

  Her flesh was rubbery, unyielding. It tasted vaguely salty but mostly he tasted the sharp tang of the blood that had been poured on her, and her own as well. As his teeth tore through it, it filled his mouth. Underneath, the muscle gave more easily. Blood ran down his throat and out the corners of his mouth, dripping down his chin. He swallowed some down as he tugged on the chunk of meat, trying to break the last elastic strips of skin.

  Finally he bit through the last one and a piece of Lilith came off in his mouth. He held it there for a moment, unsure of what to do next.

  Swallow it, Eben.

  But…

  You must.

  It was too big. He chewed it, his stomach roiling and objecting all the way. Yet he couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of satisfaction at the same time, as if his body really wanted it or needed it, like a pregnant woman’s cravings for dirt or pickles or other things she would never have eaten before.

  As his teeth broke it down, rendering little pieces from the large one, he swallowed them down.

  Sarah’s hands on his back startled him. “See? Pretty cool, right?”

  He tried to smile. “Delicious.”

  “I told you. Now we have to get Bob back here.”

  “He’ll be thrilled.”

  One more thing, little Eben Olemaun…before you leave my presence.

  He stopped where he was, hoping it didn’t seem too odd to Sarah. Then again, Sarah was pretty odd herself, so how likely was she to notice? What?

  He knows.

  Who…Enok?

  Yesssssss.

  What does he know?

  Everything . How you and Stella defended your little village. He has watched you, or had you watched. He knows about the traitor vampire, too, the one who came here with you. He knows about the humans you have allied with—nuisances, but nothing more. He knows about many things, and some disturb him more than others. He has a plan to deal with them all. Enok, you will find, is careful to amass information and execute the option that best suits him.

  Does he know we’re here?

  I would not make the mistake of believing he does not, were I you.

  “Charles? Are you coming? Is something wrong?”

  Sarah stared at him now, her expression curious, wondering. He had been standing still for some time, he supposed. “Wrong? No…should anything be wrong?” he replied.

  “I don’t know, you just looked sort of…sort of frozen, I guess.”

  “I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure he had ever told a bigger whopper in his life.

  “Let’s find Bob, then. That poor man needs a taste.”

  “Okay.” Eben let himself be led from the Lilith Room, back into the shadowy main hall.

  He had his own reasons for wanting to find Dane—the sooner, the better.

  30

  THE HOUSE BY the banks of the Ogeechee River looked much like the other houses around it, which Andy figured was exactly the point. No one looking at it from outside would see anything strange about it. Trees pressed in on all sides, branches weighted down with Spanish moss, and Andy had noticed a pathway down to a wooden dock on the river side as he drove up. Its clapboard siding, painted white, showed signs of age—stains, discoloration, mildew around the base. Its shingled roof had seen better days, too, and had as many gaps as a third-grader’s teeth. A front porch sagged like it was depressed about something, but the glass was intact in all the windows, the screens taut, and the doors looked sturdy. Lights burned outside and in as he and Stella emerged from their rented car.

  They had called before arriving, and Ferrando Merrin expected them. The neighboring houses weren’t very close—each house on the river seemed to have a half-acre lot—but he didn’t know who was in them and didn’t want to raise any eyebrows.

  The front door—inside the screened porch—opened before they even reached the plank steps. A man came out—elderly, but spry, his spine straight, hair combed, a welcoming smile on his lean face. “Come in, we’ve been waiting for you,” he said. He stepped quickly to the screen door and held it open.

  “How is she?” Stella asked.

  “Coming along rather rapidly, I should say,” Merrin answered. He shook Stella’s hand, then Andy’s. His grip was firm and dry. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  “Strange circumstances,” Andy said. “But likewise.”

  “Strange indeed.” He brought them inside the house’s front room, a small, badly lit living room stuffed with two yard sales’ worth of furniture and accessories. Someone had hung wallpaper with velvet trim, maybe fifty years ago, and every day of that fifty years showed. “Can I fetch you anything?”

  “I’m good,” Andy said.

  “No thank you,” Stella replied.

  Interesting. Andy was determined to keep a closer eye on Stella. She hadn’t had any blood for a while, and now not accepting any from a supposedly trusted host?

  She could have torn Andy’s head off and downed his at any time, but she hadn’t. The dread that had cast a pall over him for the remainder of the trip, since the motel room, refused to clear up.

  Plus, traveling with one bloodsucker had been bad enough, but now Andy was here in a house with two of them, and a woman carrying a third. Or if not a vampire then something else. If they tu
rned on him, could he defend himself?

  Merrin waved Stella and Andy to chairs—the room contained a wide variety of them, from midcentury modern to a Barcalounger with great gashes in the leatherlike fabric—and they parked themselves. A spring jabbed Andy in the back.

  “I’m certainly relieved that you’ve both come,” Merrin said. His voice, like his manner, was as prim as a British governess’s, circa 1950. At least according to the movies Andy had seen, since he hadn’t been alive then, much less in England, much less in the care of a governess. Merrin gave him that impression, at any rate. “I’m not afraid to say, this entire escapade is entirely out of my usual bailiwick. I’ve never been a nursemaid to a pregnant girl, much less a midwife, which if you hadn’t come soon is a role I’m afraid I would have been forced into.”

  “We can stay until she delivers,” Stella assured him. “At least if she’s progressing as fast as she says.”

  Andy wasn’t sure what exactly his role here was. Stella had asked him to accompany her, and he had agreed, albeit reluctantly. They had made the trip, with Andy fearing for his life, and he still didn’t know if he was meant to be a bodyguard—unlikely, he knew—or comic relief, or what. So he had decided to let her do the talking, right up until the moment he opened his mouth and words tumbled out. “Maybe faster than any of us are ready for.”

  “That’s certainly seems to be the case,” Merrin said.

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t have a whole lot more experience at it than anybody,” Stella said. “Eben and I delivered a baby one winter—couple of kids got stuck in the snow on their way to town in a little Toyota, when they needed four-wheel drive, and by the time we got out to them, it was too late to do anything except stand by to catch.”

  “I had two daughters,” Andy said, wincing inwardly at the necessary use of the past tense. “I was in the delivery room for both of them. If that helps.”

  “Oh, it’ll definitely come to that,” Stella said. “Unless we’ve got a blizzard going I don’t know what to do.”

  “I can virtually guarantee that there will be no blizzard this time,” Merrin said. “Beyond that I make no promises whatsoever.”

  “Maybe we should see the patient,” Stella suggested. “Is she awake?”

  “I believe so,” Merrin finally said. “She was watching television earlier. She can’t get enough of it.”

  “She’s upstairs?”

  “I told her I thought she should stay in bed as much as possible. She’s got so big. And then…there are other factors. You’ll see.”

  Andy rose from the Barcalounger. His kidney appreciated the motion, freeing it from the pressure of the broken spring.

  “This way,” Merrin said.

  Merrin led them through a door and up a straight, narrow staircase that seemed to rise at a seventy-degree angle. At the top was a hallway with several bedrooms, including one from which Andy could hear the sounds of spoiled young people arguing bitterly. Guess a reality show’s on, he thought.

  Merrin stopped short, just inside the doorway. Stella almost ran into him, and Andy had to put his hands on her back to slow himself. “Oh, my,” Merrin said.

  “What?” Stella pushed past the tall vampire. “God!”

  Andy joined them inside, heart racing. Anything that could freak out two vampires had to be bad.

  It was bad.

  The young woman sat up in bed, gaze fixed on a 13-inch television set that stood on top of a dresser across the room from her. The TV was on but she didn’t see it. Her eyes were glassy, her mouth slack. A thin line of drool ran from the corner of her mouth to the sheets tucked under her arms. Her belly was huge and round, like a beach ball under the blankets.

  Dane had told Andy she was African-American, but her skin looked pinkish at first. Then Andy realized it was semitransparent, and the color came from the blood vessels and musculature beneath it. “Merrin?”

  “I was up here not twenty minutes before your arrival,” the vampire said. He sounded shaken. “She was fine, laughing. Her color was good.”

  “Well, something’s happened,” Stella said. She touched Ana’s shoulder, gave her a little shake. “Ana?”

  No response.

  “Is she dead?” Andy asked.

  “No, she’s breathing.” Stella touched her neck. “Her heartbeat feels strong.”

  “The baby?”

  Stella peeled back the covers. Ana wore a thin cotton nightgown, plain white with pink ribbons around the neck and sleeves. With her health a greater concern than her privacy, Stella pushed up the nightgown to expose her stomach.

  Here the skin was even more transparent, stretched thin. It reminded Andy of looking through a domed window somewhere, maybe on a submarine ride. Only this was not a fish or eel looking back at him, it was a fetus. It appeared fully developed, and it revolved slowly inside Ana’s womb, slowly spreading the fingers of its right hand. Watching it gave Andy an eerie sensation of voyeurism; he was seeing something he clearly was never meant to. Not in this way.

  “My Lord,” Ferrando Merrin said. That was not a phrase vampires used often, or lightly, in Andy’s limited experience. He couldn’t argue with the sentiment, though.

  “Yeah. That’s…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence, so just let it trail off. No one noticed.

  “Baby looks healthy enough,” Stella said.

  “Shouldn’t we call nine-one-one?” Andy asked. “For Ana?”

  “Yeah.” Stella’s tone was bitingly sarcastic. “And tell them what? Save the baby, but make sure it doesn’t bite you?”

  “I see your point.” He took another look. From here, he could see no indication that the baby wasn’t perfectly normal. Its setting, however—that was about as far from normal as one could get. “I guess it’s just us, huh?”

  “I guess it is,” Stella said. “Hope you remember those Lamaze classes.”

  31

  THE GUY KNEW something about the vampires Dan Bradstreet’s team had let slip out of their hands on Savannah’s waterfront, and by extension, about the vampire Dan believed was behind the Headsman murders. Dan was as sure of it as he was that official Washington was a cesspool—including the people to whom he ultimately reported. It was to those people, however, that he would have to admit failure if he couldn’t break his suspect.

  They wouldn’t accept failure, and neither would he.

  He had known this about himself since high school, when he had pushed himself to not only reach a 4.0 average in every class, but to outdo every classmate in every class. When someone built a working volcano for the science fair, Dan built a scale model Vesuvius that actually wiped out an accurate, miniature Pompeii. When a classmate did a ten-page paper for extra credit, Dan did fifteen. Parents (his mother and a stepfather who tolerated him without liking him—his birth father having died in a car crash that his mom’s sisters both claimed was suicide, steering a tiny Datsun into the path of a barreling semi truck) and teachers thought his overachieving ways would take him far in business, but ever since he’d read So You Want to Be an FBI Agent in the seventh grade, Dan Bradstreet had considered no other career. The Bureau was for him. Once he made his bones there and eventually found out he could run the vampire unit of all vocations, he knew it had been the right decision.

  He would not let this…this taxi driver thwart him. The man knew things, and Dan would find out what those things were. If he had more time he could be more subtle about it. A few months at Gitmo, maybe. To really learn from a suspect, the best way was to befriend him, to establish a human connection, make him want to help you out by telling you what he knew. But Dan had never been good at human connections, only work related ones, which every party knew were nothing like real friendships.

  Operation Red-Blooded waited for no man. Something major was under way in the vampire world, and he needed to press every advantage he had until he figured out what it was.

  He had left Brent Masters—a phony name if ever he had encountered one—alone for a
couple of hours to stew in his own paranoia. Now it was time to get in there and seal the deal. The locals wanted their interrogation room back, and he needed to get his people out of town anyway.

  He pushed open the heavy steel door. Brent, or Albert Roddy, his head down on the table with a little puddle of drool beside it, snored softly. Dan walked quietly on his rubber-soled shoes, then slammed his hand down hard on the tabletop. The bang startled Brent, who sat up fast, eyes comically wide. “What the fuck?”

  “Time to get down, Brent,” Dan said. “Time to get this show on the road. Time to quit screwing around and shoot straight.”

  Brent wiped his mouth with the back of the hand that wasn’t shackled to the table. “You mean you’re going to let me out of here?”

  “Is that what I said?”

  “If we’re not screwing around anymore. Because that’s all we’ve been doing since you brought me here.”

  “You’re the one who told me your name was Brent Masters. You’re also the one I caught sneaking around on a boat belonging to Albert Roddy, which you claimed was yours. So which is it? Roddy or Masters?”

  “Masters. I won the boat in a poker game.”

  “And Roddy gave you the title, right?”

  “He was going to give it to me when I got the boat down to Florida.”

  “But you know him well enough to know that he wasn’t bullshitting you? You didn’t see the title, but you believe it’s really his boat.”

  “I don’t know him that well, but he knows some friends of mine. Anyway, I didn’t say I didn’t see the title, so stop trying to put words in my mouth. Look…are you charging me with something? I—”

  “I’m the one asking the questions, Masters or Roddy or whoever you are. You’re the one chained to that table, remember? Do you forget we’re in the middle of a war? I don’t have to let you see a lawyer, I don’t have to charge you with anything. You think I’m going to let you see a lawyer, after what I’ve done to you? At least until you heal up? All I have to do is keep you here until you answer the questions I’ve been asking about your bloodsucker friends.”