Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  He opened the back door, and I jumped in. I didn’t care, I just wanted out of there.

  Then I saw him and screamed.

  “Don’t get in!”

  It was too late. The cop sat down, and looked over at the pale-haired man sitting in his front seat with something like confusion on his face, before the man in white reached over and with casual, shocking ease plunged his fingers into the cop’s throat.

  There was a struggle. His gun came out but didn’t go off. The pale man held the cop down by the shoulder with one hand and pulled his throat right out of his neck with the other, followed by a hot red gush of blood down the front of his uniform shirt and an awful thrash that sent gore flying everywhere. Hot droplets hit my face and I screamed in raw, liquid terror and threw myself at the door, but there was no handle on the inside. He got out and he opened the door.

  “Go on then, run.”

  I ran. I got out and I ran full tilt down the road, heedless of the cars. I ran up onto the sidewalk and threw myself through the crowd. I was covered in blood. I could feel it hot and sticky on my face, soaking my clothes, but it was like I was invisible. No one paid me any mind at all. I stopped a man, grabbed him with my hands and shook him but he just stared flatly at me until I let go, then walked on as if nothing had happened, and the woman holding his arm didn’t react either.

  I spun around on my heels. Nobody noticed me and I couldn’t see the pale man, but I could hear him. His voice was lower than the noise of the crowd but I could hear his sing-song chant cut through it all anyway, threading through all the noises of footsteps and speech and every other noise of the city, even the distant crack of fireworks that sent pale red light rippling over the world.

  “Run, run, run, fast as you can.”

  God help me, I ran.

  I was never a very physical person, but raw terror can do amazing things. I ran until my lungs burned. I ran full tilt, feet leaving the ground, throwing my arms like an Olympic sprinter, leaning into it. I knew one thing. We weren’t far from the edge of town. Something deep inside me laughed. What did get out of town mean? Leave the city limits? Away from the casinos? Did I have to get to Henderson, or catch a flight?

  When it finally dawned on me it sucked the wind out of my sails. I stumbled. I almost fell. The certainty and dread were like a rock settling on my back, as I realized that head start or no, this wasn’t a game I was supposed to win. He was toying with me.

  My lungs burned and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t catch my breath. I was shaking all over, a cold sweat slick on my back. It was hot when I first ran outside but I was freezing now, and I realized with a start that the Luxor was to my right and ahead there were no more lights. I wasn’t that far after all. I ran, but this time it was a slow jog, all the energy sapped from my aching muscles, the dull weight of dread in its place. The dark ahead of me yawned, the outline of distant hills black against the purple sky. The airport was off to my left.

  I saw the sign. Drive Carefully.

  Then he got me.

  The pale man folded out of the shadows, and had me before I could do anything but scream as he lifted me bodily from the sidewalk, my legs flailing in the air. I kicked, I screamed, I scratched, I tried to bite him. I fought. I didn’t want to let him take me but he wouldn’t stop.

  When fighting didn’t work I begged and screamed and wept, and when he dropped me some dull stupid part of me thought it worked, he would take pity and let me go, but he didn’t. He pinned me down in the scraggly scratch grass and dirt by the side of the road and threw his weight down on top of me and I fought to wriggle free even as I begged him to stop, to have mercy on me.

  “Don’t kill me,” I begged, “Please don’t. Do whatever you want, just don’t kill me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m getting married on Saturday. Please.”

  “You’re not getting married on Saturday. I am going to kill you.”

  Someone had to hear my agonized scream. Somebody had to hear it.

  If they did, I’ll never know.

  He grabbed my chin and forced my head back. I remember the back of my head grinding in the dirt, the feeling that if he pushed any harder he’d break my neck. I couldn’t breathe. He was too heavy, too strong. When I raked my nails over his skin it was like trying to claw marble. I remember the feeling of my nail ripping out, the sting.

  Then I felt his teeth on my throat. Not fangs, just teeth, and the building sensation of pressure, building to the worst pain I ever felt as he closed his jaws in my flesh and took a bite out of my neck, and the hot rush of blood. It went down my throat and when I tried to breath I choked on it.

  I could feel it all over my chest, my chin, flowing and spurting at the same time. He drew back with a mouthful of my throat and my blood and swallowed and watched me writhe on the ground as the pain built and built, spreading through my body. Nothing hurts like bleeding out. Nothing.

  With one hand he tucked his sleeve down his arm, exposing his wrist.

  “The blood is the life.”

  He sank his teeth into his own flesh and bit, opening up a horrid, pale pinkish wound. His blood was dark, thick, like it had time to set up or dry out. It oozed down his arm and I was dying and he held it to his mouth and I watched his throat bob as he drew his own blood from the wound and snapped back down.

  I tried to turn away. I tried to die but he wouldn’t let me. He pushed his lips to mine and his cold tongue forced my lips open and then the blood came, cold and hot, mine mingled with his, and he mashed his lips to mine until, on pure instinct, I swallowed.

  A chunk of something slid down my throat. I felt it slip through my wound. It was moving inside me, ice cold, like I’d bitten off a squirmy, rubbery sliver of a glacier and gulped it down. It fluttered in my chest, hard and scratchy and I could hear it, like a moth caught between glass and a door, fluttering.

  He ran his hand down my cheek as gentle as a lover, smearing my skin with cold blood.

  “Mine.”

  5

  I’m dimly aware that I’m screaming and that powerful arms have locked around me, trapping my hands to my chest.

  “Christine, it’s over.”

  “It’s not over. It’s never over.”

  I can’t stop screaming, and sobbing. I feel tracks on my cheeks, feather light scratches, and when I touch my fingers to my skin they come away pink. I’m weeping blood. I pinch my eyes shut and will it to stop but my eyes are burning. It was like I was really there. It’s dark in the room now but he has the fire going, crackling and throwing long shadows across the carpet. We’re on the bed. I’m in his lap.

  He’s very warm, and strong. Too strong.

  Too strong to be human.

  “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. No one can get you here.”

  “No one but you,” I push him away and slide away on the bed. “Don’t touch me like that again.”

  It’s hard to see his face in the dark, but easy to see his expression crumple. He stands up and goes back to his chair, flops down, and pulls that notebook onto his lap. I sit on the bed in a twisted tangle of quilts and sheets, swiping at my face and leaving long red tracks on my forearms. He tosses me a damp towel and I take it, and clean myself off. The white terrycloth turns pink before I finish with it and throw it on the floor.

  “What happened to you is not your fault. There was no way you could have stopped him.”

  I can’t look at him. I stare down at my feet and wiggle my toes inside the scuffed toe-caps of my sneakers.

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “No, it’s not. I understand how you feel.”

  “You don’t understand shit. You don’t know what’s it’s like to be pinned down and… and I begged him to stop and he did it anyway. He thought it was funny.”

  My head droops and I can barely choke the words out. I don’t even know why I’m telling him. I don’t owe this son of a bitch an explanation.

  “He made me like him.”


  “That’s not true.”

  I look over and glare. “How do you know? Maybe I enjoy hurting people. Maybe I like it.”

  “I already know you don’t.”

  “You’re right,” I shout, my voice tightening. “You’re right, I don’t. I hate it. Drinking blood makes me want to puke. I can’t stand it. Every time I do it, I’m like him. It’s like that night over and over again. He didn’t violate me once, it happens every time I have to feed. He… he made me this.”

  He closes the book.

  “I promised if you answered my questions I’d answer you yours. I can tell you what you are.”

  I rest my chin on my knees. “Will it help me stop?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t care.”

  “You are nosferatu. The undead.”

  “I knew that already.” I can’t help but laugh. “I’m a vampire.”

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “Vampires aren’t real.”

  He doesn’t get the joke. He just slumps in his seat. “There are seven species of hemophagic theriomorphs.”

  “Hemowhatic what?”

  “Blood drinking supernatural beings.”

  “So there’s six other kinds?”

  “No, five. The other kind is extinct. I hope.”

  I couldn’t help it. My interest was piqued.

  “What are the other kinds?”

  He sits back in the chair and folds his legs. His foot does that thing again, his toes circling in the air, and I get that feeling yet again. That sensation that I can remember remembering something. I turn away.

  “It is said that long, long ago, before recorded history, the world was ruled by noble houses of sorcerer-kings. Terrible, cruel monsters that enslaved nations, but they were mortal and in time even they would die.”

  I snort. “Let me guess. One of them made himself a vampire to be immortal.”

  He shakes his head. “No, worse. One of the darkest and cruelest of these sorcerer kings, the most brutal and monstrous, had a bright spot in the depths of his black soul. He came to love a mortal girl, a normal human being. They say she changed him, and his kingdom changed with him. In those days the king was the kingdom, and he could breathe in royalty and reshape the land itself. The other sorcerer-kings could not bear the greatest among them turning from the path of darkness, so together they combined their eldritch might to kill this girl that had tainted the most powerful of their number.”

  I fold my arms and lean back. It’s stupid, but it’s an amusing story, at least.

  “Then what?”

  “The sorcerer-king was not one to give up what was his lightly. He placed his love under a spell, a rupture in time. She was sealed in a coffin where time was frozen, one instant away from death brought on by the curse of the other sorcerer-kings. Then in his rage, he rose up and slew them all, cast them down and broke their places of power, and the reign of the sorcerer-kings was ended, save for one.

  “His realm became an even darker, harrowed place as his rage and despair grew. One by one, he performed a series of experiments, seeking a way to unnaturally extend the girl’s life and spare her the horrible death awaiting her when his magic ran out. Each one of those experiments birthed a monster, a tainted being that could only survive by feeding on the blood of the living. He saw each as a failure and threw them out of his realm, into the lawless world, where they found demonic spirits and dying gods to act as their patrons. It was the final experiment that brought about his end.

  “By then he had no subjects for his vile rituals, and so he subjected himself to the torturous ritual he devised. If it worked, he would restore his love and together they would rise from death to take vengeance on the world.

  “By then the sorcerer-kings of old were dust, and the results of his experiments came to rule over men and carved out kingdoms of their own. They recognized the great sin that their creator had undertaken, and knew he had to be stopped.

  “Together the six paragons of the vampire races gathered their most powerful children and besieged the sorcerer-king’s fortress as he finished his ritual, and he was slain, but at terrible cost.

  “The rulers of the six houses gave up their lives and the energies they had consumed to form the walls of his prison and lock him away from the world. They carried away the time-wound coffin and buried it deep in the earth in grief, in final tribute to their master, to forever keep his love one moment away from death, for in her own way, she was their mother.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Then what happened to them?”

  The light from the fire catches his eyes. They were blue before. Now they’re an eerie, unnatural color. Yellow-gold, and the in the firelight his pupils close into slits.

  Like a snake.

  “There was a war. Leaderless, the vampire clans threw themselves at each other, the most powerful each hoping to carve out a kingdom for himself. The battle was so terrible that the lesser vampires feared they would go extinct and die the final death. So they, in turn, overthrew the clan leaders, and a pact was made. They formed the Parliament Sanguine, the ruling council of all vampires, and sealed in blood the Great Pact, a sacred body of law no vampire may violate. The world was divided between five of the six houses. The sixth house, the nosferatu or undead, refused to join, and became outcasts, driven into dark, wild places.”

  “How come nobody knows about this?”

  He gets up and walks over. I watch his movements as he sits on the bed and folds his legs under himself, and looks at me.

  “Remember history class?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  He smiles, softly. “Think about the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs. The people worshipped them as gods.”

  “So?”

  “So, they were gods, in a way. They were the ash-lords of old Khemri, the living dead who ruled the cradle of civilization. All the royal houses of the ancient near-east were the ash-kings. Now there are none left. Some of the houses went East to Asia, some fled across the Atlantic to South America to become feathered gods and eat the hearts of sacrifices. Some went to Europe. On the Italian peninsula the serpent-lords ruled the Etruscans, and then the Roman Empire.”

  I try to swallow the lump in my throat.

  “You talk like I should know all this already.”

  “Your sire is supposed to teach you. As mine taught me.”

  I recoil against the wall. “You. You’re a vampire?”

  I expect him to smile, but there’s only sorrow in his expression. “Yes. There was no other choice.”

  “Did they… did they force you?”

  “Not exactly. It’s complicated.”

  “What kind are you? You’re not like me, are you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “No. I am a lamia, one of the serpent lords of old Etrusci.”

  “Serpent. Like a snake.”

  He nods.

  “I hate snakes. They’re icky.”

  “I know,” he says, and for the first time since I met him I hear a hint of a laugh in his voice. “I know, but it’s a better option than the alternatives, trust me.”

  I don’t realize I’m smiling until the expression fades from my face.

  “What do you know about me? How I… work.”

  “The nosferatu were cursed at the great battle to forever fear the light of day. The un-dead cannot bear its touch without burning and prolonged exposure leads to spontaneous combustion.”

  “I know that,” I say. “You did a good job of reminding me of it.”

  “Christine, everything that I’m doing I’m doing for a reason. I promise you will understand.”

  “I don’t believe you. What else is there? Tell me the rest.”

  “You don’t want to hear it. Maybe another time when you’re ready.”

  “What happens to me when I die?”

  He swallows. I see the strain in his expression.

  My voice shrinks down, but I have to ask. I might finally hear it from somebody that
knows.

  “Is it like when I sleep? Is it just… nothing, or is it…” my voice cracks. “Will I go to hell because I’ve been bad?”

  Lightly, he runs fingers through my hair. I shudder.

  “That wouldn’t be very fair, would it?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “I wish I could tell you more. I can’t answer that one.”

  “Can’t, or wont?”

  “One more question. Then you need to rest.”

  I don’t want to ask. I’m afraid, because I already know the answer.

  “Is there a cure? Can this be fixed? Can I be like I was?”

  He’s quiet for a while. He looks at his folded hands and sighs.

  “No. You can’t be put back like you were. It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry.”

  “Get out,” I hiss. “Get away from me.”

  “Promise me you’ll get some rest.”

  “I’m not going to promise you anything. I don’t know who you are and I don’t owe you anything. Leave me alone.”

  “As you wish.”

  There it is again. Echoes. Something shivers just out of my reach and is gone before I grasp it.

  The fire is still crackling as he picks up his notebook and closes the door behind him. I hear it lock with a metallic crunch, but when I think of testing the lock there’s a pulse around my neck and I feel the collar tighten. No, I’m not going to try to escape. For a time I sit up and watch the fire. The truth is, I do feel tired. It’s at once familiar and alien, this weariness in my head and my muscles.

  Something makes me pick up the bloodied cloth and toss it in the sink in the bathroom, before it stains the carpet. While I’m there I decide to change my clothes. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want to sleep in jeans anymore. It makes more sense to put on a pair of underwear and a long, loose t-shirt with Spider-Man on the front.

  As I hold the garment out in front of me I can’t help but notice the spots where it’s gone threadbare and is wearing through, and the holes under the arms.

  I drape the cool cloth over my skin and wonder why he’s making me wear someone else’s clothes.