by S. J. Coles
“What happened?”
I toyed with my shirt, my throat suddenly tight. “He was a drug addict. Still could be, for all I know. It became…difficult.”
“Do you find all relationships difficult?”
“If you’re so interested in human relationships, why didn’t you stay in one?” I regretted the bitterness that leaked into the words, but he only regarded me calmly.
“Would you feel the same way about me if I were a human?”
“Yes,” I answered, heat filling my face. “And it would have been a whole lot less complicated.”
He watched me a long moment. “You realize if I were human, we would never have met? I’d be an old man slowly wasting away in another country, if I were still alive at all.”
“You know what I mean. It would be easier if you weren’t…what you are.”
“Are you sure?” I looked at him hard. He was regarding me with a mix of expectancy and curiosity. “You’re so far removed from your own kind that you find them hard to be around. And, well, I’m the same. Don’t you think that’s what’s between us?”
“I would still like you if you were human.”
The suggestion of a smile played on his mouth. “You can’t know that.”
“Why didn’t you stay one?” I asked again. “Why did you ever want to become…what you are now?”
He dropped his eyes. “Who says I was given a choice?” I stopped where I stood, trying to let that sink in. He let out a small sigh. “For the record, I’m not particularly interested in human relationships. Just yours.”
“Why?”
“You’re interesting.”
“How?”
“You live in a place you hate, yet refuse to sell it or make it your own. You’re a prisoner of your past but still fight it at every turn.”
“It’s not like that,” I said, heat flaring in my face.
“Isn’t it?” He was gazing at me, his expression blank. There was no inflection in his tone, no judgement, but it felt like he was seeing right into me.
“What has this to do with anything?”
He stood from the couch in one lithe movement. His lean form outlined by the light from stove was breathtaking, but he seemed as unaware of his beauty as he was of his state of undress. He studied me for a long moment. “You’re interesting because you’re different.”
“Because I hate humans?”
His eyebrow rose. “Is that how you’d describe it?”
I muttered something under my breath and bent to put on my jeans. I didn’t hear him move, but he was suddenly next to me and using his strong hands to raise me up to meet his eyes. His intense gaze felt like it could peel layers from my flesh. “Being different doesn’t mean being wrong.” I held myself very still. He examined me for another long moment then gave my shoulders a gentle squeeze and drifted back toward the sofa. “Eat, Alec,” he said. “Then sleep. It’s nearly dawn.”
He pulled on his jeans then scooped the bottle of blood off the kitchen floor before passing through the inner door and closing it softly behind him.
Chapter Six
I spent most of the following day drifting between fretful sleep and equally fretful wakefulness. I ate a little food but had no appetite for it. I daydreamed about what night would bring and was vaguely angry at myself for wanting it so much. I made myself think about Meg and prayed she was okay. David too. I wondered if Terje's Magister, Evgeniya, had taken anyone else…
I showered, wincing when the hot water washed over the cuts on my arms and torso. Catching sight of myself in the mirror, my flesh pinstriped with hairline cuts and purpled here and there with bruising, I felt slightly nauseated. But that didn’t stop my mind from racing right back to when Terje had made those marks, run his mouth over them and shuddered with ecstasy.
I returned to the sofa and held my head in my hands. Then I noticed his jumper was still on the floor. I ran the soft material between my fingers, breathed in his distant, fresh scent, then fell asleep with it pillowing my head.
The dreams were back. I was caught in a snowstorm, the biting wind raking over my exposed skin. My blood was freezing in my veins. There was a voice somewhere in the wind, cool, calm reassuring—but it terrified me.
I woke again, cold but sweating. I had another shower, built up the fire and paced the small room. I peered out of the window to the snow-covered mountainside, which was completely empty of even animal life. I turned my phone over and over in my hands before returning it to my pocket with a curse.
I stood watching the inner door as the darkness gathered outside. My blood stirred and my mouth watered when the handle turned. I briefly wondered what the hell was happening to me. Terje stepped out, clothed in heavy boots, coat, hat and gloves.
“I have to go.”
“What?”
He went to the fridge for a bottle. “You need more food. And I need to find out what’s happening.”
“Now? Tonight?”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “It has to be at night.”
“But why tonight?”
His blinked once, slowly. “It’s been two days. It might all be over. Don’t you want to go home?”
I clenched and unclenched my fists a moment. “Of course I do.” Just not yet.
His face softened, like he’d heard the unspoken thought. He came forward and gave me a cool, chaste kiss. “Trust me, Alec,” he murmured against my skin. “This’ll all be done with soon.”
“Take me with you.”
“You’re safer here,” he said, unlocking the front door.
“Wait.” He paused whilst the frigid night air swept into the room and stirred his hair around his face. I fidgeted, knowing what I wanted to say but instead opting for what I knew I should say. “Will you check on Meg? And tell her I’m okay?”
He studied me and I tried to figure out what he was seeing, but I could just as successfully read the paint on the wall. “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “Try to get some rest.”
He left without looking back. I heard him lock the door, then his car started, followed by the muted sound of the tires crunching through the snow. I watched from the window, but without headlights, the rapidly shrinking pinpricks of light on the dash were all that could be seen. Soon the only sound was the wind.
I hesitated a moment then tried the inner door, but that too was locked. I sat and thought about why I felt abandoned and foolish. Slowly, I realized that I’d thought about being with him since that first night at Glenroe, even as I’d leveled a gun on him and my gut had roiled with terror and rage. Now I’d gotten everything I wanted. I’d made love to him. I’d tasted his mouth and skin and Blood. I’d possessed him—some of his secrets and all of his body. And yet he’d left me with nothing but a kiss that had felt more like something given out of politeness than attraction or affection. But at the same time, there was no denying the strength of his reactions when we’d been together, even if some were ones I didn’t understand.
By the time the next evening came, I was about ready to start throwing things from boredom and frustration. I finished off the pickled vegetables and fish, but my stomach was still a hard knot of hunger. I drank from the tap to try to ease the pangs and smiled a sardonic smile at finding that I missed my larder of budget canned goods at home.
I blinked, realizing I’d thought of Glenroe as home for the first time.
Night fell. He didn’t come.
I forced myself to be patient. Midnight came and went and still there was no sound of a car approaching. I paced. I peered out of the window into the blackness. I swore, unlocked the front door and crunched out into the snow. My breath billowed in the spilled light from the cottage door. There was nothing but unbroken night around me, alleviated only by the blanket of stars high above. I stood, watched and listened until shivering set in, then retreated.
I fell asleep around dawn, too exhausted to stay alert, released by the knowledge that it would be at least another day before Terje return
ed. When I woke, I tried not to think about what might have delayed him.
Nightfall came again. Terje didn’t. It was past midnight by the time I could stand it no longer and turned on my phone. It had half its battery left, but no service. I checked for WiFi then 4G without much hope.
No networks detected.
I rattled through the drawers until I found a torch, pulled on my coat and headed out the front door. It would have been a stupid thing to do even in good conditions in an area I was familiar with. Climbing unknown mountains in the dark and the depths of winter was an act so foolhardy that I felt I’d almost deserve to fall and break my neck or leg, die of exposure or lose digits blackened to frostbite at the very least. But something was wrong. I could feel it. And I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.
The snow was shin-deep as I plowed uphill. My jeans were soaked through in minutes. Fat, lazy flakes drifted in and out of the torch beam, catching in my hair and eyelashes. I wiped them away impatiently, keeping one eye on my phone as it hunted for signal.
Searching…
My lungs started to burn. The wind got stronger. Scree shifted in the snow under my feet. I stumbled twice, the second time having to scrabble for my dropped phone in the snow. The cottage lights shrank to a dot of yellow far below in the otherwise unending darkness.
I stumbled onto a plateau. The snow was gathered in deep drifts against jutting rocks on either side. The rocky outcrop like stone fingers reached into the night over my head. With a jolt, I realized where I was. I’d done rock-climbing there with David, years ago, when he had still liked sports. There was an overhang and caves, which must be the ones Terje had mentioned, farther along the ridge where we’d practiced free-handing. It had taken hours of hiking to get here. We had come specifically because there was next-to-no chance of tourists.
I shuddered, very uneasy at knowing just how far from civilization I was. I swung the phone about, left then right.
Searching…
When I turned around a third time, despair threatening to swamp me, a bar of phone reception blinked into existence. I held perfectly still, heart jittering. No 4G registered, but the reception bar held. Text messages began pouring in, lists of missed calls, voicemail notifications. There were a number from unknown numbers with no messages left. Had the police finally connected the disappearances to the guests at Ogdell’s Blood Party and were trying to track me down? There were texts from David, demanding to know where the hell I was, and a surly text from Clem with no punctuation, wanting to know what I was playing at, disappearing with no word. But the majority were messages from Meg, which became steadily more desperate, finally just pleading with me to let her know I was okay. The last one had come in earlier that morning. Knowing she was still alive flooded me with a relief that was almost palpable. Only then did I finally admit how scared I’d been.
My face and fingers started to sting whilst I queued the voicemails. I stared into the dark, a new cold that was nothing to do with the weather stiffening my limbs as I listened to Meg’s second message.
“It’s Karlsson, the dealer. He’s dead, Alec. Not missing like the others. Dead. Murdered. Butchered in his own home. What’s left of him was displayed on the roof garden of his house. They say his head was ripped off. Not chopped off, ripped off.” She paused and I could hear her gather herself. “It’s absolute chaos. They know a haemophile’s behind it. The anti-haemos are out in force. There are protests in London, Glasgow, Birmingham. There was a riot in Manchester this evening. Three men were shot. People are targeting haemophile communes, their human reps, everyone. It’s madness. You have to come back. We have to speak to the police. I know what I said, but it’s all gone too far. We have to tell them what we know before this gets any worse.”
The message had come in the first night I’d spent at the cottage with Terje. That had been four days ago. God knew what might have happened since. Her voicemails after that were just her ordering me to let her know I was okay.
There was one voicemail from David.
“Alec, you better be alive because, God help me, I’m going to kill you if you don’t let me know you’re all right.”
I tried to search for Internet again, desperate to read the news, but there was still no coverage. My finger hovered over the New Message icon. The low-battery warning flashed.
I typed hurriedly.
I’m okay. I’ll ring as soon as I can.
I hesitated over the send button, those calls from unknown numbers sending tendrils of unease creeping through me. But I gritted my teeth and pressed Send. The screen blinked and went black. I cursed, holding down the power button, but it was dead.
The wind surged and my jaw ached with the violence of my chattering teeth. I set off back down the mountainside, following my scuffed trail that was already disappearing under fresh snow. By the time I was closing the cottage door behind me, I was stiff with cold. I showered and changed into dry tracksuit pants and a hoodie from my pack, laying my other clothes by the fire to dry. I hunted through the pack for my phone charger, even though I knew it was still plugged into the wall at the distillery, just for the sake of doing something. I drank more water in an attempt to drown the nervous roil of my innards and the increasing demands of my hunger, then I stared out into the night, feeling walled in by cold, clinging fear.
“Where are you, Terje?” My voice was small in the solid silence.
I forced myself to ration the fuel for the wood-burner. I bundled myself in all my layers as soon as they were dry and sat, huddled on the carpet, watching the flames. A dull, confused emptiness stole through me.
I woke, curled in a ball in front of the now-cold wood-burner, to the sound of a vehicle approaching. I sat up, groggy with fatigue and hunger, and hurried to the front door and out into the thin, freezing air. A 4-by-4 was coming up the narrow track. I rushed to meet it squinting to try and make out Terje through the tinted windows. I realized, too late, that it wasn’t the SUV and that weak winter sun was flooding the glen.
There was nowhere to run, even if I could have done so. The large, black vehicle stopped a few feet away. The doors opened and out stepped Jon Ogdell, along with three people in black with body armor bulking out their already considerable frames and automatic weapons in their hands. I stared at the guns, then at Ogdell. His round face was drawn and his formerly-bright eyes were sunken, haunted. His skin had the sallow paleness of someone ravaged by sleeplessness and stress. But he was smiling.
He paced forward, brand new snow boots having no trouble on the uneven terrain, taking in my own appearance with obvious, even slightly manic glee. “Lord Aviemore,” he drawled, “fancy running into you all the way out here?” He waited for an answer, his smile tightening when I didn’t reply. “Shall we go inside?”
“What do you want, Ogdell?” My voice was thin but I kept it steady.
“Just a little chat, Alec,” he said. “A brief, friendly chat about some mutual acquaintances.”
“How did you find me?”
“Couldn’t resist texting your girlfriend, could you?” Ogdell continued. “You managed four days. I’ll give you that. But I knew you’d cave. Weak men always do.”
“Look… I don’t know what you want—”
“Take him inside.”
I tried to dodge but the three armed figures, two men and a woman, were all larger than me and weren’t weakened with hunger and fatigue. The men grabbed me under the armpits and dragged me along whilst the woman followed with her gun at my back. They marched me into the cottage and dumped me on the sofa. Ogdell scanned the room with an air of bewildered curiosity, his breath misting in the cold air. He opened the cupboards, then the fridge, and froze.
“So where is it?”
“Where is what?”
He closed the fridge softly and paced over to stand in front of me. “You know what.” I glared at him. “Don’t play dumb,” he grated, gesturing at the fridge. “You think I don’t know what this place is?” When I still didn’t answer,
he bent his face to mine. I could see the broken capillaries in his nose and the threads of red in the whites of his eyes. “Where’s the damn vampire, MacCarthy?” I scowled harder. His frown deepened. “Check the whole place,” he ordered. “Tear it apart if you have to.”
One of the men hurried up to the bathroom while the other battered at Terje’s locked door until it splintered.
“Are the hired thugs really necessary?” I said. “You too afraid to talk to me alone, Ogdell?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. They’re not here for your benefit.”
“Haemo sleeping cells,” reported the man returning from the back room, “but they’re all empty.” The other came back down from the bathroom and shook his head.
“Where. Is. The. Fucking. Vampire?” Ogdell’s face was flushed an ugly red. I forced myself to hold his gaze without wavering. His eye twitched. He dragged over a chair and sat close, our knees almost touching. His mouth was a thin, bloodless line. “I know you fed the thing,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “I know you let it escape.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me.” He cut me off with a finger at my face. “Karlsson told me everything. Before it massacred him, that is.”
“Terje didn’t kill—”
“What?” he interrupted, his eyes narrow. “What did you call it?” I clenched my mouth shut, trying to scan the room for any kind of improvised weapon. “You know its name? ‘Ter-jah’?” Ogdell drawled, seemingly butchering the pronunciation on purpose. “Do you know what this thing did to Karlsson? To my sister?”
“He didn’t—”
“He?” He barked a harsh laugh. “Jesus, MacCarthy. I didn’t think you were this twisted.”
“You abducted him,” I growled. “Drugged him. Tied him to a table. Tortured him. You drank his Blood, for fuck’s sake, and you call me twisted?”
Ogdell’s eyes flickered. The manic light in them was snuffed, leaving behind a low, impenetrable darkness. “It’s a monster,” he breathed. “A demon. A murderer and a degenerate.”
“Try looking in the mirror sometime.”
