by J. R. Rain
Only my own warning senses ringing loud and clear, and they were practically begging me to get the hell out of Dodge. Or the hell out of Cloudland.
But I didn’t leave. I continued standing there like an immortal idiot, cudgeling my sluggish brain to make sense of it all. My brain wasn’t normally sluggish. In fact, my brain, especially after a feeding, was generally razor sharp.
What was happening to me? And where was everyone?
I listened and soon picked up the sound of a vacuum somewhere. I also heard talking from somewhere, too. I turned. And at the far end of the hallway, I saw a small group of young women exit through a side door.
If my sense of direction was right, they were heading back to the open field and to the stone demon.
I sensed there would be a sacrifice in the immediate future and, dog or no dog, I wasn’t going to let that creepy bastard hurt his daughter.
And with that thought, I dashed back up the four flights of stairs to her bedroom. Or cell. Or whatever it really was. The door was open. I looked inside. Empty. The far window was still open, and the curtains billowed in on a breeze. I went to it and looked out.
Sure enough, the cultists were gathering around the stone demon and there was Erasmus on the platform with his daughter, Lilith.
I leaped from the window.
* * *
I landed hard. Too hard.
In fact, something popped painfully in my knee. What the hell? I couldn’t remember the last time I had hurt myself.
I frowned as I stood. I waited briefly for my body to repair itself and it did...although not as fast as I would have liked. And not as fast as I was accustomed to.
Something’s wrong with me.
With my knee mostly repaired, I set out, moving quickly through the grassy slopes that led up to the compound. I picked up speed, virtually flying over the grass. Sometimes I can run so fast that it appears my feet don’t touch the ground.
But not this time. This time I felt every thudding footfall.
And, amazingly, I was running out of breath, too—or at least what passed for breath in my undead condition.
At the edge of the clearing, hidden within a copse of evergreens, I watched as young women filled the open space. Most sat on their knees and stared ahead. Most were, I assumed, drugged out of their freakin’ minds.
And there was Erasmus with Lilith, who sat in a chair. Her arms hung limply at her sides. Her head lolled forward, chin resting on her sternum.
I debated. The girl didn’t have much time. Not to mention I didn’t have much time, either. I’ve seen some weird shit in my time, but I’ve never seen an actual, honest-to-God demon summoned.
I could leave. I could turn and run and get the hell out of there. Whether or not a demon would really make an appearance, I didn’t know. What the demon’s agenda was, I really didn’t care. Whatever happened in Cloudland was none of my business.
Run, and don’t look back.
Except I didn’t run. I continued standing behind a tree, watching, debating, wondering what I should do. Indecisive. Almost nervous.
And all the while I felt weaker and weaker.
What the hell was going on?
I took in some air, kick-starting lungs that I rarely used. Years ago, I had learned that I really didn’t need to breathe. I did it for show, sometimes. To keep folks from asking questions.
But I need to breathe now.
Yeah, something was very, very wrong.
It was now or never.
I took in some more air and dashed forward, speeding through the tall grass and between sitting bodies. Although I was not going anywhere near as fast as I could, I was still pretty damn fast. Just a blur to those sitting there, watching the scene before them.
Erasmus seemed to spy me. He had stepped behind his daughter, holding something in his hand. His gaze, I was certain, was locked onto me.
Interestingly, no security guards leaped to his defense, and the closer I got, the more I realized I had stepped into an elaborate trap.
No. Not stepped. Flew headlong.
Screw it. Weakened or not, I was taking Lilith with me. At the very least, I would save her.
And as I bounded onto the raised dirt platform, with the massive stone demon rising high into the shadows behind Erasmus, Lilith looked up.
Only she wasn’t Lilith.
At least, not anymore.
It was Parker. And she was smiling demonically.
Chapter Twenty-two
I haven’t been human in a very long time.
But I can almost remember what it was like to be slow, limited, and vulnerable. That’s how I felt now, and the surge of energy that would have passed for adrenalin in a human was fading fast.
And the shock of seeing that Parker had been disguised as Lilith all along really made me feel like a sucker.
Of course, I was a sucker, and despite having just fed, I was a weak sucker.
“Where’s Lilith?” I said to them both.
The cultists gathered around made no move to attack me. That also fueled my suspicions.
“I’m right here, Spider,” she said. “Didn’t you wonder why you never saw both of us at the same time?”
My first question was “Why?” but there was no reason to even ask. I couldn’t trust anything this woman—if indeed she was even a female and a human—would say. She’d obviously been lying to me ever since the night she’d followed me to my car.
“The drained body...” I wobbled a little, feeling woozy. The moon was bright against Mount Shasta, and the whole scene had a foggy, magical feel to it.
Had they drugged me somehow? I’d avoided their purple Kool-Aid, and I hadn’t taken anything that I—
Shit. The cult guy in the basement.
My expression must have shown that the truth had dawned on me.
Parker smiled, with none of her earlier seductive sweetness. Now it was a vile thing, a raw gash of jagged teeth, lips bright and full. Erasmus smirked beneath his hood, apparently pleased to see his plan was working out perfectly.
“You set me up,” I said to her.
She shrugged. “We need your immortal power. Nothing personal.”
“So all your games were just to test me, to see if I was really a vampire.”
I could barely stand now, and the air seemed thick and heavy, filling my lungs as if I were trapped in a buried coffin. Something was very wrong. I knew I was in danger, yet I couldn’t muster the strength to take a flying leap away from the stage.
Parker rose from her chair and stepped beside Erasmus. “I had to be sure,” she said. “But, really, who did you think you were fooling? Only comes out at night, doesn’t eat or drink anything, super strong, likes to play hero. That trick with the Bloody Mary? Lame. And that name ‘Spider’? Yeah, real subtle.”
I hadn’t noticed the crowd moving, but it seemed they were closer to the stage, as if the ground had simply slid forward about thirty feet. They were making a low sound, a rhythmic chant that was almost a hum.
“But you want to know what really gave away that you’re a vampire?”
She must have broken into my apartment and found the blood hidden in my refrigerator, or maybe she’d figured out what the secret compartment in my trunk was for. And if I had my usual powers, it wouldn’t have mattered, because I would have punched, ripped, and bitten my way through the crowd. Now that there was no Lilith to save, I had lost my direction.
“Next time,” Parker said, “don’t get perfect scores on your history tests. Not that there’s going to be a next time.”
Then Erasmus raised the thing he’d been holding, and I could see it was a beautifully crafted, silver-tipped wooden stake, the gilded handle beset with jewels. Somebody had put a lot of craft into making the stake, and the wood was darkened with age and—
Something that might have been the blood of all the victims who had gone before me.
They were going to kill me, and I couldn’t do a thing about it. “I threw in tha
t bit about the drained body just to make sure,” Parker said, her words coming to me as if through a wall of gauze. “A normal person would have said, ‘What do you think did it, a vampire?’ But you didn’t even joke about it.”
“A dead girl’s no laughing matter,” I said.
“Neither is a dead cult member in the basement,” Erasmus said. To Parker, he said, “Sometimes I suspect you have clairvoyant powers in addition to possession and shapeshifting.”
“The hero thing,” she said. “All we had to do was have ‘Lilith’ send Hero Boy to the rescue, and somebody was going to get hurt. Since we didn’t know which guy he’d hit, we had them all contaminated with garlic and a bellyful of holy water. No problem to them, except for their bad breath, but you couldn’t resist the impulse to feed. Funny that your undead hunger is going to lead to your second death.”
Garlic and holy water. And I’d drunk from the neck of one of them. That’s what had hit me—vampire kryptonite. A couple of the cult members grabbed me on each side, and I tried to fight them off, but I was as weak as an anemic kitten. I looked at them to discover they were teen girls, pretty frail themselves. My self-esteem took a big nosedive.
They guided me to the chair and sat me down, and my head was so heavy I could barely hold it up. Then it flopped backward and I found myself staring way up at the ugly stone face of the demoness.
I was starting to figure it all out. It wasn’t Lilith they’d wanted for the sacrifice.
It was me.
“This is a big honor, Spider,” Parker said. “You could have gone on forever, hiding away, moving from place to place, surviving on stolen blood. And it would have been a meaningless existence. This way, you get to be part of something bigger.”
Erasmus moved in from the left, holding the wooden stake in a ceremonial position, while Parker moved in from the other side, with a crystal chalice in her hand.
“This way,” Parker said, “you get to serve.”
I wasn’t Catholic by any means, but I guessed the intent. Erasmus would jab his fancy stick in me, Parker would collect my blood, and as I died for the second time, the crowd would pass around the chalice and share a sip. I didn’t know what would happen then. Maybe they expected it would make them live forever.
Or maybe it would give their chants enough power to bring that big stone bitch to life.
I imagined it stomping down the main street in the town where I’d had my last Virgin Mary, probably with Parker inhabiting the stone and serving as the creature’s heart and soul and mind. Parker’s evils and sociopathic soul in an immortal, invincible body.
Holy shit, the trouble she could cause.
And all I could do was sit on my ass while the world ended.
Chapter Twenty-three
At least, that’s what I wanted them to think.
Truth was, I had very few options. In the past, most of their vampire victims had no doubt been rendered nearly catatonic thanks to the holy water/garlic cocktail of blood.
Trust me, I was almost there, too, but I doubted they had faced a vampire as old as me—and as versed in, well, being a vampire. You see, being a vampire doesn’t come with a handbook, and for the most part, no one shows you the way.
You just get by, feeling your way through your new undead life night after night, year after year, decade after decade, figuring it out as you go.
Well, I’ve figured out a few things in my time. And time is just what you need to figure some of this stuff out, too. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is great entertainment, and I had read it with interest back in the day. Although I was amused at all the inaccuracies, the man did get a few things right, and one of them would prove helpful now if I could just summon enough strength.
That was a big if.
As the two girls held my arms down, it was all I could do to keep my head from lolling forward. Through my blurred vision, I could see Parker grinning. For that matter, I could see Erasmus grinning, too. No doubt everyone was grinning at the idiot vampire on stage.
Did all these girls know what was truly about to go down? I doubted it. More than likely they thought this was part of the show. A ritualistic interpretation of a sacrifice, like what had happened with “Lilith” earlier when Erasmus snipped a lock of her hair. Little did they know that a real vampire was meant to die tonight. And if they did know, they were too bombed out of their brains to do much about it—or even remember.
Plus, all those teenybopper Twilight fans aside, most people prefer their vampires with a stake in the chest.
Erasmus stepped before me. Apparently, he was going to do the honors. Parker stepped to the other side. Her eyes, I saw, were unnaturally big. Too big to be human.
I’d really stepped in it this time.
Did I really think the stone statue would come alive behind me? I didn’t know. I suppose when you’re dealing with demons anything could happen.
Did I think that Parker had a crazy bloodlust that made my own seem tame? Yeah, I did. I’ve seen a few demons in my time, and their agenda is always the same: create havoc, destroy lives, gorge on humanity. Not necessarily in that order. Their power is also misleading. They promise the world, when, in fact, all they can do is create trouble.
I thought I heard a slow drum beating somewhere, until I realized it was my own heartbeat thumping steadily in my ears. It was my sluggish warning system reminding me that something bad was about to happen.
Ya think?
It was then that Erasmus raised the bejeweled stake high overhead. Parker lowered her head, her lips brushing my ears. “Bye-bye, Spidey. It was fun knowing you.”
Erasmus spun the stake in his hand, reversing his grip, and plunged it down into my chest—and he couldn’t have been more surprised when his hand went through my chest. All the way through and out the back. He stumbled when he was met with no resistance...and would have stumbled into me, except he stepped right through me.
The crowd gasped. Parker drew back, furious.
You see, Bram Stoker’s Dracula had gotten a few things right, and one of them was this: vampires—or at least some vampires—can turn into something other than monstrous bats.
We can turn into mist.
Or a semblance of mist. Indeed, I still looked like me, unless you looked closely enough. If you looked closely enough, you might rub your eyes and wonder if you were seeing things. No doubt you would see through me.
I wasn’t sure I would be able to make the change; luckily, turning into mist is a nearly effortless transformation, requiring little energy.
And, after all, my very “life” depended on it.
As Parker raged on the stage, grabbing the stake from Erasmus and swinging at me wildly, her arms passing through me harmlessly, I used the last of my energy and rose up from the stage, up into the wind, which I rode into the highest trees.
In this state, crazy as it might seem to mortals, I can’t truly see or hear. I can only feel and sense. It’s a very base existence, very elemental, like wind without the earth and fire.
And it was from this state of being, as I hovered near the tallest trees, that I gathered my strength. Vampires are supernatural creatures, and the holy water and garlic has a supernatural effect on us. Even in this elemental state, I could still feel it in me, still feel its tainted effects.
And so I hovered and waited.
Waited for my strength to return.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was a stalemate at that point.
Erasmus and his band of drugged-up merry pranksters couldn’t reach me, and one of his security goons even fired a couple of bullets at me before realizing I was immune. All I felt was a cool breeze as the bullets whistled through me.
On the other hand, I wasn’t doing so hot at keeping my mist together, being contaminated with the garlic and holy water as I was. I was starting to seep out a little, and part of me felt like just letting go, letting my undead spirit scatter across the atmosphere and go back to nothingness. It might be the final peace that ha
d eluded me for decades.
But, even though I wasn’t alive, I had a deep, intense urge to survive. It was a thirst of a different kind, but connected with the very act of drinking blood. Draining the fluid of the living was in some ways a mockery of existence, but wasn’t my existence just as valid as that of my victims?
Yes, I wanted to survive.
But even deeper than that, I wanted vengeance.
Up in the tree, I was nearly at head level with the stone demon statue, and I could see where unknown sculptors had hewed out that brutish face and chipped, shadowy eyes.
Okay, you ugly hunk of cold bitch. I don’t have a body and you don’t have a soul. Maybe we can make some beautiful music together.
Below, some of the disciples in robes were emerging from their stupors enough to figure out something really freaky was going on. A few headed for the safety of the surrounding buildings, and even one of those muscle-headed security guards took off running like a kid who’d heard a graveyard owl.
Erasmus and Parker weren’t running, though. They were standing near the base of the tree, Parker waving the stake while her “father” screamed at her, obviously blaming her for bringing him a vampire that didn’t just lie down and die like the others.
I wondered how many vampires had fallen prey before my turn. Maybe I was the unlucky seventh or something, the one that would bring the statue to lurching, lumbering life and open the way for Parker to possess it.
I was looking down at Parker, who seemed to be shapeshifting a little, because her fingers grew long talons and her teeth stretched an inch or two longer, which made her wicked grin all the more sickening.
She stuffed the stake in her mouth, like a pirate about to climb a mizzenmast, and drove her claws into the trunk of the tree. She skittered up a few feet and hugged the trunk with her lithe legs, bracing herself so she could once again reach up and sink her spiky fingers into wood.
She apparently planned to climb up to me and wait for me to incorporate, at which time she would finish her sacrificial slaughter.
