by Elisa Hansen
Well, the night certainly hadn’t gone according to plan.
Leif had been running for hours, and he was thirsty. The thirstier he grew, the harder to keep up speed, but he could not afford to stop. Although he sensed no one following him, hadn’t for dozens of miles, his skin crawled as he imagined the entire commune at his heels. The hard-packed desert earth pounded beneath his shoes, and the wind roaring past him worked through his flesh as if it would siphon the very moisture from his thirsty veins.
More miles. There could never be enough miles behind him. But what lay before him? Demos would send out word, would tell other communes what Leif did tonight. Or tried to do. Tried and failed. Miserably.
It was funny, really. All of existence ought to be laughing at him. He might as well join it. But the sound clotted and died in his parched throat. Every thread of his circulatory system screamed tortuously. Shouldn’t he have crossed a road by now? Any road. Anything but this vast expanse of nothing. Signs of civilization refused to emerge as the ugly landscape continued to crag most naturally about him. His usual jolly luck.
How he hated the desert. Wasteland with no beauty, no life. What he would give to stumble over some scavenging night creature. How he wished he could spare the moments to do some scavenging of his own.
But he could not risk it. Surely Demos sent someone from the commune after him. A minute’s pause could allow them to draw near enough to catch Leif’s scent, hear his borrowed heartbeat on the wind.
Keep going. Push. All too sparse, the hills too low, the rocks too scattered. Find shelter, real shelter.
And then? And then. He would do what? Slink into hiding like a beaten cur? Meld with the shadows, wallow and gnash back the bile of bitter disappointment?
Why yes, that was likely exactly what he would do. Just like the last time. And the time before that. And then, and then try again? If he got far enough fast enough, there might be a chance of it. If he started smaller, if he knocked his ambition down a few pegs. But hadn’t he told himself that before? Did any pegs even remain?
He ought to laugh, but his throat would not open for it. Instead, the emotion emerged as enraged moisture in his sand-scored eyes to be wind-lashed into the night. Precious droplets he could not afford to lose. Why must their blood scent linger, making his insides writhe and yearn? Another trick of his abominable fortune? The torturous scent seemed more than he could possibly produce.
More… Yes, that was the aroma of real blood. Blood fresh and flowing from something alive. Something not far upwind. Something decidedly not human, but delectable in Leif’s desperation. It clamped onto his brain and the world disappeared beyond his thirst.
He changed course and followed his nose over the next jagged hill. When he beheld what the other side revealed, the world came flooding back, and he skidded to a stop.
A solitary vampire fed upon the limp body of one of those wild American desert dogs. Leif was sure he knew what they were called, but its scent distracted him too much to attempt the proper name. The other vampire’s head snapped up, beady eyes peering through long straggled hair, bloodied lips peeled to bare uneven fangs. Even as the dog blood on the breeze made Leif’s thirst sob, he found the taste to be repulsed by such an unkempt creature.
Lifting his hands, Leif took a step back. “Apologies, my friend.” He kept his voice even despite how his veins quavered with longing.
“Friend?” the vampire spat. The dog’s body twisted in his hands, bones cracking, canine heartbeat spiking and fading. “This land is claimed.”
Commune land. This was no lonely rogue vampire.
Leif could detect no others even at the very edges of his senses, but that could change in an instant. And it would have to be a large commune in order to stake a lookout this far from its core. Large indeed. For a moment, Leif considered the advantages of joining it, hiding in plain sight. But this commune was too close to the one he left, and its size at cross purposes with his diminished ambition.
No, run. He should run.
“Understood.” Leif gave a nod and dashed back over the hill. But oh, that scent. His traitorous feet dragged against the rocks.
A warm hand gripped the back of his neck. Leif shuddered and took a long breath to enjoy the contact before throwing it off and turning around. “Can’t you see that I’m going?”
The vampire clenched the lapel of Leif’s fine coat and drew close to him in the dark. Leif fought gloriously to resist licking the blood from the lips before his face. Black strands of hair stuck to them, the rest of it draggled against the vampire’s gaunt cheeks in unattractive clumps. Earth soiled his faded blue jeans, and his hole-pocked t-shirt, two sizes too large, hung off his narrow shoulder. He appeared weeks removed from his last mouthful of good human blood. The dog blood made him warm, but it served poor substitute.
His eyes brightened as they circled Leif’s features, and he twisted the coat. “I reckon I know you.”
Impossible. Leif flinched and brushed the filthy hand away. He took a step backward down the hill. “Don’t let me interrupt your meal. They keep packs, don’t they? I’ll find my own.”
“Yeeeesss.” The vampire chuckled. “You’re that one they’re looking for.”
“I am?” Demos had alerted this vampire’s commune already? Damn it all. Leif gave his most innocent smile as he glanced pointedly at their empty surroundings. “And who might ‘they’ be?”
The vampire’s laugh grated as he wormed his hand into his jeans pocket. Something electronic clicked, making a connection. “You’ll rightly see.”
Well, then.
Leif fled down the hill, but the other vampire caught him at the bottom, blocking his path. He was young, Leif could tell that much, no more than a hundred years if he was a day. But the fresh blood in his system gave him an energy of speed Leif’s parched limbs envied.
“I told you,” he snarled. “You’re trespassing.”
“I could not be trespassing. If you would get out of my way.”
“I know who you are. Do you think they sent me out here with the coyotes for nothing?”
Coyotes! That’s what they were called.
“Traitor.” His snarling verged upon hissing. “You dare to cross Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo? The Lorenzo? Mad plague doctor Lorenzo? Leif’s Lorenzo? Not possible. No. Word had already reached Lorenzo himself? Perhaps Leif was a bit of an antique, but it boggled him that even after the technological world collapsed, vampires still managed to communicate with satellite speed.
The commune system vampires followed had Lorenzo to thank for its creation. Though vampires freely assembled their own, no commune was as massive or well-armed as Lorenzo’s. His absorbed smaller ones regularly to keep it that way, and they all deferred to him. A most dangerous vampire to cross, and a rather valuable one to impress.
And he already knew what Leif did tonight? Tried to do. But trying proved enough to make Leif’s face a marked one—far and wide, apparently! So much for his grand elaborate plans. There would be no trying again, no matter how small he started. No commune would be fool enough to invite him in now.
Why, oh why, did Leif go to break open the truck before Demos took his turn to feed? If any of the others caught him, he could have gotten away with denying it. All he needed was the distraction of escaped flesh-eaters to draw everyone out of the factory so he could plant the igniters in the caskets.
Oh, but it would have been no good at any point in the evening. When those humans with their machetes and grenades marched upon the factory, they put the commune on alert and spoiled Leif’s lovely plan. Fortune or foolishness, it did not matter. The fact was, he got caught. Now he could feel the black spot on his name spreading like a cancer.
What was the use of running with nowhere left to go?
Except, perhaps… There was always Manhattan, New York. That wonderful little island of paradise surrounded by hell. But that option came with its own set of problems. Problems that made Leif consider the pits of the o
cean as an alternative. Besides, he could hardly run to New York. Even the seasoned machine of his body was not meant to endure such strain.
No, there had to be another way out of this mess. Think, you old fool.
Leif lifted his face to the wind. If this shabby vampire had alerted his commune with whatever lurked in his pocket, no one approached yet.
“I would speak with Lorenzo,” Leif said. Another way. Lorenzo, Lorenzo, it had been much too long.
“You can try when we send him your head.”
“You misunderstand me, friend. I don’t know what you’ve been told—” In fact, Leif wasn’t quite sure exactly how much of his plan Demos even figured out. “But it is Lorenzo I mean to please.”
“By sabotaging decent vampires working on his orders?”
All right. Perhaps Demos knew everything, then. But Leif could spin it. “They were inefficient. You see, I could fulfill their orders better on my own.”
“You simpering faggot.”
Leif’s mental gears stopped spinning, and his lips pursed into a frown. “Simpering?”
“You think Lorenzo gives one shit about who delivers his cargo?”
“I don’t simper.”
“What he’ll give a shit about is me delivering him you.”
Leif sighed and crossed his arms, chafing cold fingertips against the grain of his dark wool sleeves. He was wasting his time, wasn’t he? “You insist on being entirely unreasonable, then?”
The vampire clicked the device in his pocket again and grinned at Leif, his teeth slick with coyote blood. Oh, it looked good.
All right, new plan.
“What are you called?” Leif asked.
“You reckon I’d tell you?”
Leif cocked his head. “Pity.”
The vampire scoffed, but the sound cut off in a strangled choke as Leif leapt upon him. His cold fingertips dug into the warm throat, popping the skin. A shudder of pleasure coursed up Leif’s arm as the blood cascaded over his hand.
Flipping him around, Leif pulled the vampire’s back against his chest, and put his lips to his ear. “It’s just that I like to know who I eat.” His mouth clamped upon the torn throat.
The vampire’s blood tasted nothing like human blood. Each thin metallic swallow felt like sucking electricity from copper wire. But that was typical; it was hardly Leif’s first time draining a vampire. Although the essence of coyote offered a unique terroir.
Blood was blood was blood, and it flooded Leif’s tissues gloriously. As depleted as his thirst rendered him, his brute strength earned over the centuries made the young vampire’s thrashing feeble in comparison, and he soon fell limp against Leif’s chest.
When he’d drawn as much as he could, Leif dropped the body at his feet. “May I call you Ricky?” he asked.
The vampire twitched and made a garbled sound with what was left of his larynx.
“Wonderful.” Leif licked all traces of Ricky’s blood from his fingers and then inspected his cuffs. Miraculously clean! “Good habits,” he said absently. “They reward you when you need them.”
A shudder wracked Ricky’s body, and Leif crouched to lift his head by a handful of matted hair. The whites of Ricky’s rolled-back eyes glistened in the moonlight with each twitch of his long black lashes. Rather lovely lashes, really. Leif gave the head a twist. Bones crunched, skin and sinew tore, and then he punted the head down the hill.
Sliding a hand along the wiry body, Leif retrieved the clicking thing from Ricky’s pocket. About the size of a matchbox with one center button, a red LED blinked at its end.
“Is this a garage door opener?” he asked.
Ricky did not reply.
Leif frowned at him, then stood. He considered crushing the box between his fingers, but then thought better of it and flung it in a westerly direction. It disappeared into the night, and wherever it landed, even his eyes could not make out the red light.
Let whoever tracked its signal go that way. Still no sign of any others, though. Better and better.
Far from satiated, but recharged, Leif picked up running in the opposite direction he threw the box. Straight east.
He made it perhaps thirty miles before the euphoria of escape faded enough to remind him he had no idea where he was going. Ricky’s blood diluted far too quickly in his veins, and without living blood, Leif’s speed would be nothing compared to any well-fed pursuers. His thirst crested again just thinking about it.
Curse this blasted wasteland, ashen in the nearly horizonless dark.
Nearly horizonless… But what was that, beyond the next hill? A lovely long splash of ink in the sand. And like a mummified hitchhiker at its side, a dirt-encrusted highway sign.
When Leif reached the base of the hill, sharp pebbles pricked through the soles of his poor shoes. Running had worn the fine Italian leather nearly transparent. Leif squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d really liked these shoes.
Not a sound but the wind, and the only scent on the air was that which dust brings. Anyone following him remained beyond the reach of his senses, miles from him yet. Yet.
Leif raked his fingers through his feathery hair. Always a yet.
Over the hill he went, and he drew up before the sign. Desert residue caked it so thickly he couldn’t make out the writing. He sucked in an almost painful breath and blew. The sign wavered on its stork-like leg, but the dirt did not move a speck. Leif winced; it would have to be wiped away. He would not use his coat sleeve. With a sigh, he lifted his bare hand to scratch and scrub as much as it took to read the sign.
Dog Flats – 22 miles.
“Dog Flats?” he asked it, and then gave a sharp laugh. “What a name.” But if the place was worth naming, it might very well be worth seeking.
He brushed off his fingers, flicking dirt crumbs from his nails, and then slipped his hands into the roomy pockets of his long, heavy coat. The cool satin swish sent a little thrill along his flesh, plucked a smile from his sorry lips.
His pleasure multiplied as his fingertips brushed a hard, smooth shape nestled deep in the womb of the pocket. Could it be? He was so sure he’d lost it when he fled the commune. He threw back his head, his laughter ringing clear and exultant.
Oh, he was destitute, he was hunted, hated perhaps, outcast most certainly, utterly lacking in existential purpose—but damn it all if he didn’t still have his iPod!
Dog Flats, twenty-two miles.
Oh, Leif was exceedingly thirsty, but he could be there in half an hour.
12
Death
Dying was nothing like floating. No light, no tunnel. Terrible sensation smashed over Emily's body, turning her to stone, a gargoyle of herself. Space pressed her into a ground that hardened, calcified beneath her. Everything within her skin popped at once.
Warmth oozed from her ears, but through it, she became aware of a scuffing sound.
Who? Could she look?
She worked her anvil eyes open. The night tilted sideways, and she found herself in the midst of a dark fog. It was as if a thundercloud decided to take a nap with her on the dirt.
Several yards away…was that a horse? Pawing at the gravel. At first, Emily took it for translucent, but as her vision prickled into focus, it glowed through the fog with greenish luminosity. The effect made it appear concave, like a hollowed-out mold of itself instead of a solid object.
Its bedraggled tail gave a dull flick, and it snuffed and pawed again. This time, Emily noticed the stick resting before its hooves. The long, black stick. Her gaze grappled along its length to the massive sickle blade at its end.
A shroud of blackness fell over her vision. A moment later, it lifted. Someone had moved past her. Someone wearing a long, black cloak. Emily tried to roll over. Nothing happened. A frantic whine began to pitch up in her ears.
The cloaked figure walked to the horse. The footsteps and the scratch of the trailing fabric on the dirt faded under the shrill buzzing, like a terrified fly swarm, that com
pletely overtook her hearing.
Sudden pain—a jillion needles marathoned over the shell of her body. But it did not hurt enough to distract her from the absolute shock of the sight.
It was Death who passed before her. Death himself. She lay prostrate at Death's feet. But he—he was walking away from her. Her vision swam in and out as she watched him move through the thick cloud. She watched him flex skeleton hands at his sides, nothing holding the bones together. She watched him stop short as someone blocked his path.
The someone was an old man with a cropped gray beard. He stood with a soldier’s posture. Weathered gray body armor covered his frame, though his blood-colored helmet shone like new. In the foggy dark, he stood out, opaque and impenetrable as he tapped at his boots with something—a riding crop?—in a slow, even rhythm as if he had been there waiting for Death to notice him for a very long while.
And notice him Death did. In his stillness, the night itself settled upon his black-swathed shoulders. The swirling edges of his shadow shape solidified in the fog, everything ephemeral about him collecting into the moment.
Emily could do nothing but lie there and stare as the two beings conversed. Their incomprehensible words beat at her muffled hearing like underwater dream murmurs. Eventually, her eyelids sank. She concentrated on the buzz in her ears, strained at it for answers, pushed it down. She started to count to a hundred but lost her way too soon. It felt like hours passed and no time at all.
When she opened her eyes again, the figures stood there still, all three: man, wraith, and horse. Two of them were arguing; the horse looked on. The horse looked thunderstruck.
The old man held the scythe now. The figure that was Death reached past him, grasping for the horse's gaunt face, but he could not touch it. The old man mounted the horse. It twisted and bucked under him, but a strike of the crop stilled it.
The scampering pain over Emily's skin started to fade along with the buzzing. She could make out the hollow hoofbeats and frantic whinnies as the horse was forced to turn around. She heard the armored man’s whistle and the crack of his whip, and then a cavernous cry.
