
FIRST EDITION
Bloodrush © 2011 by Bryan Smith
Cover Artwork © 2011 by Zach McCain
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DELIRIUM BOOKS
P.O. Box 338
North Webster, IN 46555
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, thanks first and foremost to my lovely wife, Rachael, who has gone through so much in her life. I love you and don't know what I would have done without you this last decade. I also want to thank Cherie Smith, Jeff Smith, Eric Smith, Keith Ashley, Shannon Turbeville, John Barcus, Ben and Tracy Eller, Derek Tatum, Tod Clark, Mark Hickerson, Kent Gowran, Joe Howe, Jay and Helene Wise, Dorothy C. May, Brian Keene, Paul Legerski, Paul Synuria, Doug and Jamie Dobbs, Brittany Crass, Elizabeth Rowell, Shane Staley, KAOS, the Creeping Cruds, Kim Myers, John Hornor Jacobs, Jeff Burk and Deadite Press, and all the regulars at my Keenedom message board.
1: AFTERSHOCK
Awareness. Dim at first. Flickering moments of confused consciousness. The world was darkness, informed only by the grayest sense of existence, of being. Then smells, the first real sensory input from the world outside this cage of foggy consciousness. An array of pungent aromas assailed his nostrils, most strongly with a scent of...sick. Puke. Somewhere very near. The almost overpowering odor made his nostrils twitch and his eyes water. The return to consciousness gathered momentum. The tactile world returned. He felt something solid beneath him. Something pressing against his face. It was...it was...oh yeah...a floor. Rough hardwood planks. His fingers twitched, clawed weakly at the pitted wood. Left hand fingers only. No sensation on the right side yet. Which was vaguely worrying, but a faint signal from somewhere within the murkier depths of his subconscious indicated this particular symptom was not indicative of a debilitating injury. Which was great news. Totally awesome news. But all other indicators so far pointed toward a situation loaded with an array of negative factors. A clusterfuck, in other words.
The crawling, grasping fingers of his left hand touched something wet.
Something sticky.
He lifted his fingers out of the wetness and focused what he could of his still much diminished will on the physical act of bringing those fingers toward his face. It was a slow and complicated process. Seemed to take forever. As if it was happening in slow motion. Except, no, that wasn't quite right. Slow motion would be akin to the speed of light compared to this. He thought of a saying he used to hear. Something someone close to him used to say often. Slower than Christmas. Yeah. This was slower than Christmas. Wait. What the fuck was Christmas again? Huh. Oh, yeah. Decorated tree. Lights. Songs. Gifts. Everybody drunker than shit. And no one drunker than his old man. Another moment of slowly-dawning insight. Dad. It was Dad who used to say that thing about Christmas. Said it all the time, applying it to anything that taxed his patience even a little. It had irritated him so much as a kid. Like, come on, pops, come up with some fucking new homilies already. But it felt oddly applicable now. It almost felt as if time was moving in reverse. As if...
As if...
darkness
DARKNESS
Nothingness.
And then...
His head jerked up a fraction of an inch. His eyes fluttered but did not quite open. What...what...what's going on here?
He remained very still, focused his concentration again. The very last bits of sensory information came floating back. The sick smells. The wetness on the floor.
I should really open my eyes.
Even as some terrified part of him rebelled against the notion, he willed himself to do it.
Focus.
Concentrate.
His eyes fluttered again, but only a little. He bit down on his lip, amped up his concentration. A sound disturbingly like the growl of a wild animal emanated from deep within him. He had to open his eyes. So much was still cloaked in darkness, even the most basic things A sense of who he was. Or of where he was. Nor did he have any idea what had happened to him. He might have fallen and hit his head on the end of a table. Or he might have been the victim of some kind of attack. He could be bleeding to death right now.
Who am I?
What the hell's going on?
"Am I dying?"
He froze for an instant, surprised to have heard the voice. Then he realized it was his own voice. Curiously, this did not reassure him. Or maybe that lack of reassurance made perfect sense. What if he'd been attacked in his own home by an intruder? Some scumbag looking for drug money. Okay, he thought. Say there's an intruder. Maybe he thinks I'm dead or close to it. And maybe in that case I should stay very, very still, play possum.
It was no doubt the right course of action.
If there was an intruder in the vicinity.
But what if he really was bleeding out all over the floor? He could die while waiting for this hypothetical intruder---who might not exist at all---to leave.
He absolutely fucking had to open his eyes RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
He opened his eyes.
Saw the blood-soaked fingertips of his left hand hanging limp right in front of his face. Full consciousness came screaming back in an instant. All thought of playing possum vanished in the same instant. A horrified roar came out of his throat as he braced his hands firmly against the floor and propelled himself into a sitting position.
He was in a house. Bright sunlight spilled through a large bay window, illuminating a vision straight out of hell. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. Sweat glistened on his face. Bile touched the back of his throat. His head jerked sharply from side to side, his eyes moving crazily in their sockets as his mind struggled to catalog and comprehend the scope of the horror. But true comprehension wasn't possible. Everywhere he looked, he saw blood. He was in a living room. He saw a couch, a coffee table, a throw rug, a recliner. Blood spatters stained all these things. Other blood spatters described crazy arcs across the walls and the floor. The blood was bad. Very bad. Except that it sort of...smelled good, which was many different levels of fucked up. And there was so much of it. But the blood wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was the bodies. Or, rather, the pieces of bodies.
One of them belonging to his girlfriend of the last several months. Yesterday, he thought, struggling against the urge to collapse back to the floor and curl into an insensible ball of human uselessness. Just yesterday I was looking at engagement rings, and now...
And now...
Her head was on the coffee table, wedged inside a basket containing magazines. The rest of her was somewhere else. Maybe elsewhere on the floor, with all the other pieces of bodies. Or maybe somewhere else in the house. It was hard to tell.
He remembered some of it now, including who he was.
And some of what he had done.
David Rucker opened his mouth wide and screamed until his lungs were raw.
2: RECOGNITION
He cursed his stupidity. His weakness. Because when you got right down to it, that weakness was the reason he was sitting slack-jawed and horrified in the middle of a sea of blood and puke. It was why he was surrounded by the ripped-to-pieces bodies of Janine and her family, the people who should have been his in-laws a few months hence.
His imminent proposal of marriage to Janine Martin had been a sort of open secret. Everyone knew it was coming. Members of both the Rucker and Martin families had been making sly, winking references to it for months now. They were perfect for each other. It was what everyone said. Hell, it was what they'd said to each other countless times. And today their engagement was to have become a reality. His plan had been to do it here at the Martin homestead, on bended knee in front of Janine's entire family. It was to have been the kind of sweeping romantic gesture he'd hoped to make a regular part of life with his beloved.
He stared at the stump of her ripped-off head and choked back a sob.
What a joke that seemed now. No. Not a joke. An insult. He knew now he'd never been worthy of her love. She was gone. Irretrievably gone. She had died in unimaginable agony. And it was all his fault. All because he'd been so fucking weak.
An image flashed into his mind---those glass cases at the jewelry shop. It was there, during his hunt for the perfect ring, that fate had taken that first bitter turn. In hindsight, it was easy to pinpoint the precise moment when he'd lost his soul forever. It was seared into his brain. He would never forget it, even if he lived for another million years.
The thought chilled him.
He would not live for another million years.
Or even another second.
Because, technically speaking, he'd been dead since yesterday. He remembered that now, too. And how he'd died. And, in remembering that, a chain of other memories began to unlock, link by link...
3: THE LAST DAY OF DAVID RUCKER'S LIFE
Bright overhead lighting enhanced the glitter of the jewels displayed beneath the thick planes of glass, making some of the finer stones sparkle with a radiance that was breathtaking. His eyes zeroed in on one displayed prominently in the center of the nearest case. Ensconced in its cushion of black velvet, it seemed to emit beams of the most beautifully incandescent sunshine. He imagined slipping that stone on the slender finger of his wife-to-be. He could see her melting at the sight of it, beaming as tears of joy spilled down her cheeks.
He belatedly realized someone was speaking to him.
"Sir? Sir?"
He glanced up, saw a smiling, smartly-dressed woman on the other side of the case. "Yes?"
"I see something has caught your eye. Would you like a closer look?"
"I...uh..." His gaze drifted from the stone to the little white price tag beside it. Written in blue ink was a figure so astronomical it seemed impossible, the stuff of science fiction. No way could a number that high actually exist. He suppressed a flinch. His love for Janine was beyond quantifying, but the perfect stone for expressing that love was far out of his financial league. This was the kind of rock a Bill Gates or Donald Trump would give someone. And even those guys might flinch a little. It was disappointing, but---
A weird sensation tickled the back of his neck. A very light, feathery feeling. It was there and then gone. He frowned and touched his neck. Nothing there.
"Sir? Is something wrong?"
He realized he'd gone several moments without speaking. He felt strange. Just the slightest bit woozy, as if he'd had a glass or two of wine. His eyes watered a little, the brilliance of the stone morphing, becoming an indistinct blob of white light. He had to stop staring at it. He stood up straight and blinked slowly at the saleswoman.
"I'm sorry, I, uh..."
He felt it again.
That very delicate, feathery sensation at the back of his neck, again very brief, lasting no more than a second. In the next moment, he became aware of a secondary sensation, this one mental instead of physical. It was a feeling of being watched.
He turned away from the frowning saleswoman. She was still speaking, but her voice became fuzzy, her words indistinct. A pretty girl with pale skin and black hair sat on a bench a dozen yards or so outside the jewelry shop. The bench was nestled against the base of a gently trickling water fountain located in the center of the shopping mall's main atrium. The girl was wearing combat boots, a short black skirt, and a black jacket over a plain black T-shirt. Her lips, however, were very red, like the color of freshly spilled blood. Even from this distance, he could see that her eyes were the most vivid blue he'd ever seen. The color was so vivid he suspected she was wearing colored contacts.
She was looking right at him. When she was sure she had his full attention, she crooked an index finger at him, bent it back toward her.
Come hither...
He again felt that slightly woozy sensation. He shook his head to clear it and only then realized he was already walking toward her. The instant, unthinking obedience didn't strike him as worrisome right away. He was distracted, consumed with the problem of finding a way to do right by Janine without putting himself permanently in debt. The decision to approach the girl had occurred on a subconscious level, was perhaps in part driven by a need to get away from the expensive stones on display in the jewelry shop and the maddening dilemma they presented. The girl wanted to talk to him and he was happy to oblige her. He told himself he would've been grateful for any kind of distraction. That was all she was to him.
A distraction.
A temporary diversion.
Nothing more.
Sure. Of course. He wondered if he knew her somehow. He didn't recognize her, but he supposed it was possible. He smiled sheepishly as he came to a halt in front of her. "Hey. I'm sorry, but do we know each other? Because I can't---"
Two things occurred simultaneously.
He realized she wasn't smiling. Indeed, she had no discernible expression at all.
In the same instant, she patted the empty expanse of bench beside her.
"Sit down, David."
He sat. Again, there was no conscious decision to obey. He became aware of a rushing sensation in his ears. At first, he figured the trickling of the water fountain had amplified somehow, but then he felt that wooziness again. It felt like he was deep underwater. Too deep. With his eyes and mouth open wide, and the surface somewhere far above him. His vision blurred.
The odd sensations abruptly ceased.
He gasped. "Whoa. What the...fuck. I felt like I was...like I was..."
Drowning.
Huh, he thought. Strange.
He realized then that something outside the realm of what he thought of as the normal world was occurring. It should have frightened him. He knew that. And, on some remote level, he did feel a faint concern, but the feeling was so far away it didn't matter.
Right now, nothing mattered but this strange girl.
"How...how did you know my name?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears. He couldn't pinpoint why at first, but then it came to him---he had spoken with a child's wonderment. "Do I know you?"
She didn't say anything.
The silence unnerved him, added to the already overpowering sense of surreality. It was a space that needed filling, so he filled it.
"You made me come over here. Compelled me. I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I felt." He raised a hand to his mouth, swiped moisture away from the corners of his lips. "Why did you do that?"
"I can make you do anything."
He believed it. "Okay."
"I could make you kill yourself. Right now."
A shiver passed through his body. "I believe you."
"I could make you kill the people you love. Even Janine."
"No." This time he didn't bother questioning how she knew something she should not know. She could read his mind. She knew things. Fine. About this, though, she was wrong. She had to be. "You couldn't make me do that. Ever."
For the first time, there was a perceptible change in the set of her features. Her left eyebrow---which had a single, almost understated piercing through it---arched ever-so-slightly. "Oh?" Her inflection, however, remained flat, unchanging. "Do you really think that's true, David?"
Suddenly, he didn't want to answer the question. So he asked a few of his own. "What's going on here? Who are you? What are you doing to me?"
Her head swiveled away from him. She stared straight ahead. "I'm going to give you a choice, David. A simple matter of picking your destiny. You'll choose your path with your own free will. I will not coerce you."
David sucked in a big breath and blew it right back out. He was close to panicking. Shoppers were passing by in front of him. Men and women. Children. Teenagers. Back and forth, going here and there, many of them passing within a few feet of where he sat with this odd young woman. Every one of them utterly oblivious to his predicament. He put a hand to his chest, felt the rapid beating of his heart. It was going too fast, like the double-bass drumming common in the death metal music he loved when he was younger. Almost too fast to discern individual beats.
She touched his knee. "Calm down."
His knee turned to ice.
Except that it didn't. Not really. It just felt that way. The chill conveyed by her touch went down to the bone. He shivered. His heart rate began to slow almost immediately. His breathing became more regular.
He swallowed hard and shook his head. "What the fuck? How do you do that?"
She ignored the question and repeated her previous brief speech about a choice he had to make. Of his own free will, she again emphasized.
"Lady...what the fuck are you talking about?"
Her head turned slowly back toward him. Her expression was absolutely blank again. "Here it is, David. You can get up and walk away from here. You can choose to continue with your life as it was a few moments ago. You can marry that woman. If that is your choice, our paths will never cross again. This is my promise to you. And I always keep my promises, I assure you."
David laughed. "Why would I choose anything else?"
"If your devotion to Janine was as strong as you imagine, you would have stated your choice immediately rather than reply with a question."
He frowned. "Bullshit. It's simple human curiosity. Anyone would want to know the rest of it. The rest of...whatever the fuck you're talking about."
She stared at him without speaking for several moments. During the silence, he found himself entranced by her lips, which looked...delicious. He felt guilty for even thinking it. It'd been a long time since he'd allowed himself to think of another woman in even a vaguely sexual way. It often wasn't easy, but until now he'd managed to still his roving eye, which had been so active prior to Janine. No other woman could ever seriously tempt him when he had her to come home to every day. But this woman's mouth changed that. He wondered if her lips were as soft as they looked. He wondered whether they would be as cold as the hand on his knee if he were to kiss them.
Her hand came away from his knee.
He drew in another big breath and expelled it. He only became aware of his physical reaction to her touch after she'd removed her hand. He was hard. Achingly hard.
A corner of her mouth subtly twitched, hinting at a hidden emotion. Was she smirking or smiling at him? Maybe a little bit of both. She was playing with him. Toying with him, like a spider prolonging the misery of a bug ensnared in its web. And it amused her to do so. This was her idea of entertainment. It should have bothered him, but he found he was oddly okay with it.
"Very well, David."
He shook his head. "Um...what?"
"Here's the rest of it, as you put it."
"Oh. Okay."
"Here is your other choice. Please listen carefully."
He shrugged, his brow furrowing again. "Okay."
"Excellent."
She clasped hands with him. He felt that bone deep chill again, only now it was many times more intense, probably because of the direct skin-to-skin contact. The chill spread from his hands up the length of his arms. She leaned closer to him, peered into his eyes, her expression very intent. There was still no obvious emotion he could read, but she was studying him as closely as anyone ever had.
"You can come with me to my secret place."
"You mean...your home?"
"Yes. We can go there now, be there in a matter of moments, if you accept my offer. I'll show you pleasures beyond anything you ever dreamed possible. You'll have power. You'll live forever." A hint of a smile. "In a manner of speaking."
David managed a nervous laugh. "You make it sound like an offer I can't refuse."
"I've already told you, you can refuse it."
Obviously she'd never seen The Godfather.
"Wait. What do you mean...'in a manner of speaking'?"
She ignored the question and leaned closer still, until their faces were separated by just inches. Her cold breath frosted his cheeks. "If you choose to come with me, you can never return to your former life. I will own you. Completely and forever. You will do my bidding as long as you exist."
Another nervous laugh. "Oh. Really?"
"Yes."
The cast of her features still conveyed an intense curiosity, but was that a hint of something predatory in her eyes he was seeing now? Her grip on his hands tightened by a very small---but perceptible---degree. The chill her touch conveyed now permeated his entire body. She licked her lips. His heart stuttered at the sight of that pink wedge of tongue. She tilted her head slightly and her face came closer. Their lips were no more than an inch apart now.
"Do you mind if I kiss you, David?"
He blinked moisture from his eyes.
Janine, he thought.
He knew he had to keep thinking of her. Understood suddenly that it was the only way to break this spell. More than anything else, he knew he couldn't allow this woman to kiss him. Because if that happened, what remained of his free will would evaporate in an instant.
Janine.
I can't do this.
I can't.
I CAN'T!
Her lips grazed his mouth. He felt her cold breath steal between his lips. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I need your answer, David. Now."
He sniffled.
Janine...oh, God...I'm so sorry...
He swallowed thickly. "Yes."
For the first time, a fully formed smile spread across her pale as snow face. "Yes." Her voice dropped to a slightly huskier register. "You're mine, David. All mine." She cupped his face in her ice-cold hands and kissed him fully on the mouth. He groaned. An arctic chill filled his lungs, took root deep inside him, making his whole body tremble uncontrollably.
She broke the kiss off and clasped hands with him again.
"Now we go to my secret place."
"And then what?"
She smiled for a second time. This time there was something secretive in it.
"You'll see."
"Okay."
It was strange. Now that she'd kissed him, thoughts of Janine seemed far away. He was betraying her, but it didn't seem to matter.
And yet, this woman scared him. No amount of mental trickery could disguise that. Or perhaps she was allowing him to remain in touch with his fear of her for obscure reasons.
He knew only one thing with absolute certainty.
She was right.
He belonged to her now.
Completely.
4: HER SECRET PLACE
She was nuzzling his neck now. Her cold lips raised goose bumps on his trembling flesh. Something...unnatural was happening. There was power in her kisses. Real, palpable power. Each application of her lips to his flesh was like a shot of anesthetic. He was becoming numb. He felt disconnected from his body. It was scary and fascinating at the same time. They were still sitting on the bench in the mall, but the mall was swathed in a shimmering white light. The shoppers walking past the bench were indistinct gray shapes moving in the light, nothing more than vague outlines. They didn't seem real at all now, more like suggestions of people, faint pencil sketches on an otherwise empty sheet of white paper. He felt sort of like a suggestion of a person himself, able to cling only to the faintest notion of who he was. I'm...David? But the matter of his identity seemed of little consequence. He felt lighter than air, like a balloon floating in the sky on a warm summer breeze, drifting ever higher and higher. It was the most wonderfully freeing sensation he'd ever experienced.
And then it was gone.
Total blackness displaced the tableau of shimmering white light.
The feeling of near weightlessness verging on non-existence ceased in the same abrupt instant. He was in his body again. He felt the ground beneath his feet. He heard sounds. A metallic clinking. Followed by someone moaning. Though he couldn't see anything, it was immediately clear this was not a sexual sound. It was the sound of someone in misery. The moan trailed off into a pitiable whine, followed by a deep inhalation of tortured breath.
A disturbing thought occurred to him. He was dead. This was Hell. He'd died on that bench in the mall. The nameless girl hadn't been a girl at all, but was instead some kind of demon. He recalled the way her kisses had numbed him. Wasn't it possible that, with each kiss, she'd been draining the life out of him through some unfathomable supernatural means?
He'd been in a crowded shopping mall a few moments ago. Now he was in this dark place of misery and pain, transported here by some inexplicable method. In a world in which something that incredible could happen, of course it was possible.
He heard a thump, followed by a wet, squelching sound. A scream followed. High and piercing. Then another squelching sound. David didn't need to see what was happening to know what had occurred. What he'd heard was the sound of a blade, likely a rather large one, being thrust into living human flesh and then withdrawn. The victim screamed again. This time the sound was abruptly cut off after another loud thump, which David guessed was the big blade hacking into flesh again. Something hit the ground somewhere just ahead of him and came rolling toward him.
A head, he thought.
That's what I just heard. Some poor bastard just got his head chopped off and it came sailing in my direction. Shit.
The smart thing to do was obvious---get as far away from the invisible murderer as possible. He turned slowly in the perfect darkness, moving with utmost care as he searched in vain for some dim source of light. His whole body was trembling---and not just from the wintry chill in the air. There was nothing. Nowhere to go. Any possible escape route, in the unlikely event one even existed, was perfectly hidden.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he became aware of a presence somewhere behind him. A presence coming toward him---from the direction he'd been facing a moment ago.
Death is coming for me. This is the end of my life.
If this was truly the end, he could at least face it with some degree of dignity. Better that than to go stumbling blindly into the featureless darkness. He'd trip over something and go sprawling to the ground within moments, then wind up crawling and begging pitifully for his life as Death bore down on him. And probably pissing his pants in the bargain.
Screw that.
He turned slowly around again, willing the tremors to leave his body as the thing in the darkness came closer still. He could sense it out there, moving slowly, coming straight at him, able somehow to see him despite the unbroken blackness.
The voice, when it spoke, was what he expected to hear.
"You are mine."
Her.
He sighed. "Yeah. I suppose I am."
At the sound of his voice, a chorus of moans and entreaties arose from the darkness. It was the sound of the helpless begging for succor, for release from their bonds. Other voices urged him to run before it was too late. He ignored them all. Everyone here was beyond any hope of rescue, himself included.
"You know what amuses me, David?"
Her voice was as chilly and devoid of emotion as it had been during their strange conversation on that mall bench. It was impossible to imagine this creature being 'amused' by anything, but this was her game. Her rules. He was nothing but a pawn. A puppet. He had no choice but to play along.
"No. But I suppose you'll tell me."
She was very close now, perhaps only a few feet away. Her proximity triggered the same mixture of terror and arousal he remembered from before.
"Your notion of dying with dignity. You must know by now you'll only have as much dignity as I allow you. If I want you to beg for your life, you will beg. Understand?"
David took an involuntary step backward. "Stay out of my head, lady. This reading my thoughts thing is freaking me out."
Another step back.
And another.
He sensed her rushing toward him. There was no sound of footsteps. It was as if she were gliding above the ground.
Hell, she probably is. Maybe she's not a demon at all. Maybe she's some kind of fucking witch.
"Stay where you are!"
Her tone was stentorian, louder than usual and with a discernible tinge of anger. It was a terrible sound, more awful by far than the now silenced screams of the person she'd just killed. Her voice thrummed with power, conveying her will through streams of energy that effectively locked his feet to the ground. Further retreat was impossible. Disobedience was unthinkable. His head was hurting and his stomach was in knots. He hunched down, hiding his face with his shaking hands. Somewhere very nearby someone was whimpering. In a moment he realized the sound was coming from his own throat. He felt like something low, something less than a man. He was a worm beneath her boot, waiting to be stepped on and crushed out of existence.
"I'm sorry. I-I..."
"Shut up."
His mouth snapped shut.
"Drop your hands and stand up straight. And stop cringing."
He did as she said without hesitation---there was no other choice.
She said nothing further for a while, but she was even closer now. He felt her frosty breath on his cheeks. He was turned on again. It was insane. He was in a place of horror, a place that felt like a chamber of hell, a repository of damned souls. Her "secret place," as she'd called it, was a nightmare land inhabited by people like himself, other flies she'd drawn effortlessly into her web, and here he would spend what remained of his life, probably being tortured without mercy until he was just another pitiful moaning husk lurking in the darkness. And yet, in this moment, the terror he felt at the prospect of this bleak future was not enough to suppress his desire for this creature. When he felt her cold fingertips caress his chin, the light touch was nearly enough to bring him to orgasm. The feeling was so intensely pleasurable that tears welled in his eyes when she pulled her hand away.
A cold exhalation of breath touched his cheeks. Accompanying it was a soft, almost inaudible sound, uncharacteristic for her---soft laughter. It should have angered him, but all he felt now was a deep sense of resignation. And regret. He knew he would never see Janine again, would never have a chance to apologize for his weakness.
"Stop thinking about her."
David shoved any further thoughts of Janine back down into his subconscious. It wasn't easy, but the primal terror evoked by the fierceness of her tone provided all the motivation necessary.
"Would you like a better look at your surroundings?"
Well, that was a strange way to phrase it. A better look implied he'd had some kind of actual glimpse of the place at some point. Such was not the case. And, listening again to the low moans and whimpers issuing from seemingly every direction, he wasn't sure that was a bad thing.
"Um..."
"I sense reluctance."
David scratched the back of his head and frowned. "Um...yeah. It's just all this screaming and so forth. The moans and the carrying on. I find it sort of disturbing."
To understate.
"I see." A brief, contemplative pause ensued. When she spoke again, there was a note of genuine curiosity in her voice. "Tell me something, David. Whom would you rather be---the person suffering, or the person inflicting the pain?"
"Neither."
"That isn't a choice."
"Oh. Well. Shit." There was no good answer to her question, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what she wanted to hear. "The latter, I guess."
"Smart boy. Too many of your kind are constricted by artificial notions of 'right' and 'wrong.' I sensed you were better than that from the moment I set eyes on you."
David's frown deepened. "What do you mean?"
"On the surface, you are like most other humans, a believer in morality and the concept of consequences for misdeeds. Beneath the surface, though, lurks a capacity for boundless cruelty. For infinite sadism. It was this quality that first drew me to you."
"Well, that's just crazy talk. I'm not a bad person. I'm not...cruel."
She laughed. "But you are, David, as you'll soon discover. I'll show you the truth about yourself. But before I can do that, I have to show you my truth."
Countless flickering pinpoints of light flared to life all around him, tall candles burning in thousands of sconces embedded in the high walls of a vast cavern. The moans of the suffering were suddenly louder, as was the metallic clanking of chain links as they cringed away from the glare of the dancing columns of flame. It was hard to tell how many people were imprisoned here, but the number had to be in the high hundreds, at least. Most of them were bound by chains bolted into the stone walls of the cavern. Iron manacles fastened about their wrists and ankles severely limited range of motion, which meant they were forced to intermittently move their bowels and empty their bladders wherever they happened to be chained. They were forced to wallow in filth. The entire place reeked of piss and shit and vomit. How had he not noticed that until now? Dozens of other prisoners hung suspended from chains dangling from the roof of the cavern. A closer look revealed that a number of the chained men and women were dead. Some had been dead a long while, their bodies mere husks. Others were freshly dead, the scent of their ripe and rotting corpses battling for supremacy amongst all the other putrid odors. Those still alive were nude and emaciated, their flesh ghostly pale from the lack of sunlight.
In the midst of the cavern were a number of roughly constructed wooden tables, upon which were strapped other emaciated persons (some living, some decidedly not), as well as numerous devices of torture David recognized as being from the middle ages. He couldn't name them all, but he was able to identify an Iron Maiden, a Breaking Wheel, and a Spanish Tickler, which was used to tear skin from the bodies of its victims. He recalled being fascinated by descriptions of such devices when he read about them in a long ago history class. Now, however, he only felt repulsion. These devices weren't museum piece curiosities. Here, in this stinking section of Hell, they were all in active use.
"This isn't Hell, David."
David choked back a tide of nausea and focused on the girl again. In the darkness, he'd thought of her only as a creature, as a thing, an...it. An evil thing. The Devil posing as a human female. But the notion was hard to hold on to now that he could see her again. She was evil. Of that he was certain. The evidence was all around him. Whatever manner of thing she was, though, human or not, he was certain she was actually female. A thing composed of flesh and blood rather than a demonic spirit. And he suspected much of her power was in some way rooted in her femininity.
"About that you're right, David. I am not the Devil." She smiled. "I'm something better."
David was close to losing the battle against the tide of nausea that had been rising within him. The rich stink of the place was thick in his nostrils. His throat felt constricted. He hunched down and braced his hands on his knees, struggling for breath.
He glanced up at her and managed to squeak out a few words. "Help...I'm...dying."
Her smile broadened. "About that, David, you are also right."
He went very still.
Something in her eyes told him she wasn't joking. His gaze went to the long sword she was holding. Dark red blood dripped from the tip of the curved blade. The blood, he realized, of the man he'd heard her decapitate only moments earlier. He tensed. Any second now she'd raise the sword again and the razor-sharp steel would chop through his own neck and liberate his head from his body, which at least would have the benefit of putting him out of his goddamn misery.
The slender hand gripping the sword's handle opened.
The heavy blade fell to the ground.
David stared up at her again, confusion etched in his flushed features. "What---"
Whatever he'd been about to say was forgotten as her jaw dropped open, distending to an unnatural length. Rows of glistening sharp teeth flashed in the flickering candle light as her plump lips peeled away from her mouth. Her nostrils flared and a hissing sound emanated from her throat.
David opened his mouth to scream.
She leaped upon him, clamping her teeth to his throat as she drove him to the ground. She growled and snarled like a wild animal, ripping at his flesh and drinking deep from the blood spurting from his jugular vein as a final scream died in his throat.
5: THE FIRST NIGHT OF DAVID RUCKER'S UNDEATH
Everything went black.
Not this shit again.
He couldn't see anything, hear anything, or feel anything. He was a nowhere man in a nowhere place. Which reminded him of some fucking song he'd heard on oldies radio. It was similar to what he imagined purgatory might be like. The logical conclusion was obvious. He was dead. Or was he? The lack of any sensory input suggested he was no longer among the living, but the ability to form conscious thoughts contradicted the death theory. Or did it? Most major religions believed in a continuation of consciousness after the expiration of the physical body. He could be some kind of floating, disembodied remnant. A soul, he supposed, detached from the physical moorings of a no longer functioning flesh and blood shell.
Blood.
Something about that word excited him, inasmuch as a free-floating remnant or cloud of consciousness can feel such a thing. There was no spike of adrenaline to quicken his heart rate or make him breathe faster. But there was a detectably greater depth of clarity to his thoughts, a sense of discernible mental agitation. The impression was so distinct it was almost as if his thoughts were glowing, manifesting as words and sentences written in bright neon against the backdrop of blackness.
BLOOD.
The last thing he could remember prior to this black nothing was the incredible physical pain resulting from having his throat torn out. All those hideously sharp teeth shredding his flesh, sending shockwaves of the most excruciating agony imaginable coursing through his body. Being without physical substance, he now felt a curious disconnect from that pain, almost as if it had happened to someone else. He was glad for that. Being a disembodied whatever was pretty lame, but it was better than hurting.
Then he remembered something else. It had happened right after the infliction of the obviously fatal wound to his throat. The creature, the whatever-the-hell-she-was, had opened her mouth even wider and then had clamped it tight around the wound, her teeth puncturing his already ravaged flesh again even as her lips formed a vacuum-tight seal around the wound. And as consciousness had faded, he'd heard a distinct gurgling sound.
The bitch drank my blood.
Every damn drop of it.
That state of mental agitation intensified.
Blood.
Blood.
BLOOD.
It was suddenly all he could think about. Blood was everything. Blood was life. There was no commodity more precious, not even gold. He found he could no longer hold a grudge against the creature that had taken his life. Of course she would want to drink his blood. Blood was food. Sustenance. Drinking it was as necessary as breathing.
It occurred to David that his thoughts had taken a very strange turn indeed, but this was a distant realization, occurring at a level far below the really important stuff. What was important was how very...hungry he was.
The word pulsed brighter against the blackness now, five block letters in blazing crimson neon:
BLOOD!
BLOOD!
BLOOD!
His eyes snapped open.
He was back in the creature's secret place. That hellish chamber. He heard the moans of the shackled prisoners and the clank of their shifting chains. He blinked and stared up at the high roof of the cavern. The bodies of dead men hung suspended from chains directly above him. Their limp forms filled him with a strange despair.
No blood to be had there.
He stared at the slowly twisting dead bodies some more.
Wait.
Dead?
Like me?
Or...not?
Well, surely he'd been wrong about that. He'd merely been unconscious. He was back in his body now. He could think. He could feel. He'd never actually been dead at all. Sure, it was a bit odd how lucid his thoughts had been back there in that formless darkness, but---
His eyes opened wider as he thought of something pretty damned important.
He slapped a hand to his neck and his fingers probed for evidence of the damaged flesh that had to be there. But the wound was gone, replaced by perfectly smooth, unblemished tissue. Had he imagined the whole thing? He didn't think so. He remembered the sensation of her teeth sinking into his flesh with exquisite clarity. And remembered just as clearly the subsequent mind-searing agony. Now he felt something altogether different. Hunger. Arousal. He kept rubbing at the place where the wound had been and realized how cool the flesh was to the touch.
It was like touching ice.
He sat up.
And gasped when he saw her. She was a dozen feet away, sitting in a chair fashioned from the blackened skulls and bones of dead human beings. Except "chair" wasn't quite the right terminology. It was a throne of sorts, a small-scale version of how Satan's own infernal perch might look. She was nude now, her discarded goth-punk clothes nowhere in sight. He saw flecks of slowly coagulating blood smeared on her chin and around her mouth. Her naked body was distinctly feminine, her breasts larger than they'd seemed underneath that jacket and T-shirt. She looked like some kind of barbarian queen from an old pulp novel. "You...what have you done to me?"
She smiled. "I killed you."
"But..." He trailed off, realizing something. This place had felt too hot before, a sensation amplified by the press of too many filthy bodies in an enclosed space. But now he was cold. He held up his hands and stared at them, noting at once that they were paler than before, an almost pure shade of white tinged with blue. His gaze shifted back to the girl---no...woman; this creature was no mere girl---and he repeated his previous question. "What have you done to me?"
She smirked. "I already answered that one. Surely you have other questions."
He touched his forehead.
Cold. Jesus, why am I so fucking cold!?
"Why am I so fucking cold?"
Another of those chilly, soulless smiles. "Because you're a dead thing, David. You'll feel colder and colder until you feed. And if you don't feed...well, that'll be the real end of you."
David wrapped his arms around his torso and began to rock slowly back and forth. "By 'feed' do you mean..."
He couldn't bring himself to say it.
She nodded. "You'll have to drink blood."
David stared blankly at her for a long moment.
Then his mind made an intuitive leap.
"Holy shit, you've turned me into a vampire."
She shrugged and scratched flecks of dried blood---his blood---from a corner of her mouth with a thumbnail. "Obviously."
He abruptly stopped rocking. His terrified expression gave way to a glare. An urge to charge her and tear her head off her shoulders consumed him. He leaned forward a little, the muscles in his body tensing as a low growl emanated from deep within him. "You...bitch."
She laughed. "I won't deny it. I'm the meanest bitch you'll ever meet, David. Of that let there be no doubt."
His hands curled into fists. He was surprised at how little fear he felt now. Despite the deep chill permeating his body, he realized how good he felt. How strong. How perfectly aware. He'd always kept himself in reasonably good shape, but he'd never been what you could call an athlete. He did a bit of exercising every day, just enough to feel like he wasn't getting sloppy, mostly cardio stuff, but he didn't lift weights or do any other kind of strength conditioning. And yet now he felt real power coiled in his muscles. He felt like he could go toe-to-toe with the toughest motherfuckers around and come out on top. His senses were heightened, too, particularly his sense of smell. Every scent was sharper now, crisper and bolder. The scents of human filth---shit, piss, and sweat---were now so pronounced they should have made his gut clench. He should be on his hands and knees puking his guts up. However, while the smells did disgust him, they produced no physical reaction. Instead, the disgust he felt was psychological. He felt contempt for the producers of the vile excretions.
For the fucking humans.
She ran a slender hand up and down the length of one of her porcelain-white thighs, licking her lips as she watched him. David felt his cock grow as he watched her caress herself. Her voice was huskier when she spoke: "You feel it now, don't you? The difference."
David couldn't help it. He smiled. "Yes."
He sprang to his feet and exploded toward her. Exploded, that was the only way to describe the physical sensation. He was upright and mobile in the blink of an eye, all before he was even remotely cognizant of what was happening. The newfound power buzzing through every tendon and nerve-ending in his body propelled him through the air like a rocket. Despite the speed of it, he was conscious of the movements of his body. The pumping of his arms. The pistoning of his legs and the flexing of his powerful thighs. He was running, a simple physical act in essence, but to the human eye he would be just a high-speed blur slashing across space.
Then he was on her.
His astoundingly strong hands wrapped tightly around her neck and began to squeeze. He snarled, eager to feel the surrender of her tender flesh to the crushing force of his hands. He stopped squeezing when he felt something strange inside his head. It was a crawling, insidious sense of something alien, some ethereal tendril, wending its way through the nooks and crannies of his brain.
He let go of her throat and staggered backward a few steps.
Maddeningly, she'd never stopped smiling. "You have a lot to learn about the new you, David. Many lessons. Here's the first."
He felt something flex inside his head.
Then he was on his back and convulsing violently. He remained conscious and perfectly aware as the tremors continued for an interminable time, his limbs twisting themselves into awkward and frightening configurations as he strove in vain to regain even the slightest measure of physical control. It was useless. She had him firmly in her grip. He was her slave. Her plaything. She could lock his body in a spastic state until he died, if she so desired. He feared his unthinking attack had pissed her off enough to make her do just that. Tears were leaking from his eyes by the time the convulsions abruptly ceased. The instant the shaking stopped he sucked in a massive breath and exhaled a cry of the deepest anguish. Then his body was shaking again, but this time it was from the force of his sobs. He turned onto his side and curled into a fetal ball, squeezing his eyes shut as tears dripped from his face to the damp earth beneath him, ground already stained with the blood of this creature's countless other victims.
His cries mingled with the sobs and moans of the chained men and women hanging from the walls and the cavern's ceiling. For a time he gave himself over to this expression of misery and grief, lost himself in it, and for a fleeting handful of moments it provided a kind of comfort. He wasn't David Rucker, newly minted dead man. He wasn't a man at all. There was no sense of self. He was just a part of a larger organism. A new thing forged from the flesh of all imprisoned in this awful place. It was good not to be David Rucker. Good to be just an unthinking, unfeeling thing.
Until the spell was abruptly broken.
"Enough of this pitiful mewling."
David drew in another big breath and forced his eyes open.
She was standing over him now, her hands on her hips, her magnificent breasts jutting outward, primitively regal and majestic, a pose that again reminded him of old pulp novel covers. Something by Boris Vallejo or Frank Franzetta, maybe, from some long ago sword and sorcery epic. Her body entranced him all over again from this perspective and for a long moment he forgot all about his terror of her. Her legs were perfect. Long and shapely. The sweet swell of her hips and the flat plane of her belly were equally mesmerizing. And those full breasts...
Then he looked at her face and saw that she was smirking.
He gave his head a hard shake and glared at her. "I hate you."
"No, David. You love me. I am everything to you."
David sneered. "Saying it won't make it so, you evil cunt." He surprised himself with a laugh. Even more surprising was the pronounced disdain in the sound. "Hell, I don't even know your goddamned name. I only love one woman and her name is---"
Her mouth opened in that unnaturally wide way again, her eyes bulging from their sockets as her jaw distended and a scream loud enough to shatter skyscraper windows filled the cavern. The sound went on and on, increasing in volume with seemingly each passing second as the black hole at the center of her face grew wider. David slapped his hands to his ears, but this did nothing to muffle the sound. The sound drilled into his ears and made his brain quiver like jelly until his eyes rolled back in their sockets and consciousness again deserted him.
6: DEPRIVATION
His head was still throbbing when he awoke an indeterminate time later. The ache extended from his frontal lobe to the back of his neck. It felt much like a hangover after a night of serious drinking. For those first few groggy moments after regaining consciousness, he allowed himself the hope that it was a hangover. He'd gone out for a night of boozing with buddies and things had gotten a little out of hand. At some vague point a few too many had turned into a lot too many, which accounted for his present state of misery and all the crazy dreams about gorgeous naked vampires and imprisonment in some remote, hellish cavern.
The delusion lasted until the moment he became aware of the heavy chain links encircling his wrists and ankles. His head tilted downward as his eyes fluttered open. His eyes widened and he sucked in a big breath as he realized just how high above the ground he was. The vampire woman's throne of blackened skulls and bones looked like a piece of pretend furniture plucked from a dollhouse belonging to Satan's granddaughter. Ditto for all the rickety tables and torture devices. But this did nothing to distance him psychologically from the gruesomeness of the grisly tableau. If anything, this new perspective only enhanced the overall horror of the situation. For one thing, the cavern was much bigger than his original perception of it. You could fit a professional football stadium in this space with plenty of room to spare. He'd noted piles of bones and decaying body parts before, but now he understood how little he'd appreciated the scope of the human detritus. Many of the bone piles were simply massive. You'd need a fleet of bulldozers to clear them from the cavern. The ache in his head intensified again as he tried to comprehend how long it would take any single person, vampire or not, to kill this many people. He finally gave up trying to understand it. It was beyond understanding. She wasn't just an old thing, she was ancient. The beautiful, youthful appearance was a façade, one she maintained through all these stolen lives.
He shifted slightly and winced as the rough cavern wall abraded his bare back. This caused him to shift again. The movement sent spikes of pain shooting up his arms, which were stretched straight up over his head. He turned his head up and peered at the thick length of chain wrapped around his wrists. The chain was secured to an iron bracket bolted to the rock wall. He jerked against the chain links, but they didn't budge. He tried again, putting all his amplified vampiric strength into the effort. One of the bracket's bolt seemed to give an infinitesimal amount. He gathered up his strength to try yanking at it again when something occurred to him. What if he did succeed in ripping the bracket from the wall?
His head tilted down and he stared again at the ground far below.
Shit.
He was already dead. At least that was the case if the vampire had been telling the truth. He was certain, though, that she hadn't been lying about that. He was dead. Undead. Whatever. What was the worst that could happen to him if he fell? He couldn't die again. Could he?
No. Probably not.
But the impact when he hit the ground might shatter every bone in his body or reduce his flesh to pulp. It was what would happen to any normal human body dropping from a height this great. However, the vampire's bite had changed his physiology in some fundamental ways. He suspected the fall would hurt him tremendously, but that he would then heal, become as good as new in a short amount of time. It was a truth he felt in his bones, an essential part of his new reality.
Still...it would fucking hurt.
The best course of action could be just to hang out---he couldn't suppress a laugh at that thought---until the she-bitch decided she'd punished him enough. The bitch about that was she might decide to really teach him a lesson and leave him here for a seriously long time. He began to feel sick again as he thought about how a creature like his captor might perceive the concept of "a seriously long time."
Hell, he could be up here for years.
He thought about that for a while.
Man. Holy shit. That would really fucking suck. The horror of the situation would begin to abate after a while, after, say, the first six months. Boredom would set in at some point. And then what? He felt an intense queasiness that again ramped up the pain resonating in his skull. This passed quickly, but the sensations were intense enough to tell him he'd overlooked something critical. Another cramp made him wince and cry out. A fresh horror dawned inside him as he realized he was going to have a much larger concern than mere boredom if he was kept hanging here for any significant period of time. His teeth chattered and his whole body began to quiver. The sensation of cold permeating his body was intensifying, becoming all-encompassing, making him feel like some kind of mythological beast. The Ice Man. And, like the cramping ache in his belly, it was only going to get worse the longer he went without...feeding.
Damn that bitch.
He wanted it. Needed it more than ever. The compulsion to drink blood filled his brain like a fever, just as it had in those first frenzied moments of his undeath. The gnawing, churning ache of the need was already nearly intense enough to drive him mad should he be unable to slake the thirst.
He wanted to scream.
He opened his mouth to do just that.
But before he could give voice to the howling need consuming him, a weak sound from somewhere to his left stilled his rage, if only for a moment. His willed his body to stop shaking and turned his head toward the source of the sound. The sound came again as he got his first glimpse of his nearest comrade in torment. An emaciated middle-aged woman was chained and bolted to the stone wall less than six feet away from him. Well, he assumed she was middle-aged, but her actual chronological age was difficult to gauge, so advanced was her state of physical deterioration. She was little more than paper-thin gray skin and bones. David knew at once she'd been hanging there a long time. The muscles in her legs and arms had atrophied. Her breasts were saggy little nubs. Never in his life had he set eyes on a less physically attractive female. He was nevertheless enthralled by the sight of her. Droplets of drool welled at the corners of his mouth as his gaze locked on the weak throb of her pulse visible at the side of her neck, the place where her jugular vein lurked beneath that fragile gray skin. He pictured himself tearing the vein open and drinking deeply from it. His penis stiffened at the thought. He could even feel a bit of warmth pushing against the awful cold gripping him.
Her eyes fluttered open as she began to perceive his scrutiny. Her head lolled toward him and her mouth dropped open to emit a single hoarse word: "...helllppp..."
David didn't bother responding. She was beyond help. He made a snorting sound deep in his throat as he continued to stare at her neck. He licked his lips and yanked at the chains binding his wrists. There was a scrape of iron against stone as one of the bracket bolts gave way another infinitesimal amount. He could feel her heart beating and savored the way it sped up as she sensed his hunger.
She shook her head weakly. "Nooooooo..."
The part of him that was still human, some withering remnant of his conscience, was repulsed by the thoughts swirling in his head. But this voice of dissent was no match for his deepening hunger. If he could get to this woman, he would kill her without hesitation and drink every last sweet drop of her blood. He yanked at the chains again, this time putting more strength into the effort than ever. Shiny tears were spilling down the woman's gaunt cheeks. Her terror excited him, added fuel to his exertions. He bellowed his rage and yanked mightily at the chains again and again. But he soon realized there was a limit to how far he could pull the bolts out of the stone. They were anchored pretty effectively, despite the slight amount of give he'd initially experienced.
He opened his mouth wide and screamed out his frustration until his lungs were burning.
And then he screamed some more.
He only stopped screaming when he sensed something rushing toward him from below. He glanced down and saw a sleek, pale shape coming straight at him. It was her. It could only be her. She was coming to punish him in some new way, to maybe rip out his throat to silence his screams. He realized he was wrong an instant later. The sleek white blur solidified as it alighted upon the emaciated woman to his left, hanging onto the bound hag as easily as a bird grips a tree branch. He had been right. It was the vampire. She held his gaze for a moment, a ghoulish grin etched across the pale, angular planes of her beautiful face.
David shook his head. "No. No. She's mine."
The vampire laughed, but said nothing.
She raked the nails of her left hand down the front of the gray-skinned woman's torso, opening five angled horizontal gashes from just above her right breast down to her waist. Dark blood leaked from the rents in her flesh. The vampire dipped her fingers in the blood. Thick globs of crimson dripped from her fingertips as she raised her hand to her mouth. David's heart shot into overdrive as he watched her slowly lick the blood from her fingers. He was already painfully aroused, so there was no need to overtly sexualize the blood-drinking, but she did so anyway, drawing the full length of each finger slowly in and out of her mouth, groaning and curling her lips in a parody of fellatio. David moaned and bucked against the chains binding him to the wall. He cried out and strained toward her with all his might, but both the vampire and the bleeding woman remained frustratingly out of reach.
The vampire laughed.
Then she let go of the gray-skinned woman and fell away from her, speeding back to the blood-stained ground far below. David watched her sleek form slice through the air, knowing she'd land as lightly and easily as she'd alighted upon the bound woman. He wondered if he could do the same thing. It wasn't something he sensed innately, the way he knew he'd recover from most any grievous injury. His brow furrowed as he gave it deeper consideration. He was a new vampire, but she'd been this way a very long time, centuries, perhaps even longer. Maybe the flying thing was an ability he could develop over time. Being bound, however, flight experimentation wasn't an option anyway, so his attention soon shifted back to the bleeding woman.
Her glassy eyes stared at him, bespeaking a silent, anguished plea.
Help me...help me...
He didn't care about helping her. The realization should have disturbed him, but it did not. He understood now the true reason for his current shackled state. He was being forced to accept the truth of what he had become. Well, the lesson had been driven home with insidious effectiveness. He no longer cared about right or wrong. Any sense of repulsion had vanished. There was only...attraction. Need. All-consuming thirst. The angled slashes across the woman's torso were deep and blood continued to spill out of them. He watched as a thick stream of crimson slid down her inner thigh, then into the crook behind her knee and down the back of her atrophied calf. He kept watching in helpless fascination as the life continued to leak out of her, his frustration growing with each wasted droplet of precious blood. This was torture of a most exquisitely cruel variety. The thing he desired most---needed most---was so tantalizingly close...and yet so completely beyond his reach.
He began another furious, flailing assault on the chains. Maddeningly, they gave no more than they had before. But this failure only further inflamed him. He screamed and flailed and raged until both his wrists snapped and his voice was reduced to an inaudible rasp. His broken bones knitted back together within minutes, but he was unable to maintain the intensity of the struggle.
The bleeding woman's head drooped forward. The blood had ceased spilling from the wounds because her heart was no longer pumping. She was dead.
David sobbed quietly for hours.
He was so hungry.
So thirsty.
Would there ever be any relief?
The answer came a few long hours later. He sensed something rushing up at him again and knew the vampire was returning. She unlocked the chains, cradled him in her arms, and swooped back toward the ground. David felt dazed as she landed smoothly and set him down on his feet.
On the ground in front of him was another bound woman. This one was much younger and infinitely more attractive than the pitiful, gray-skinned thing the vampire had used to taunt him. She'd been stripped naked. Unlike most of the pathetic things chained to the walls here, she retained most of her vitality, so much so David suspected she'd been freshly captured. She had long, midnight-black hair that fell lushly about her narrow shoulders. She was slender but curvy, with large breasts and long, exquisitely toned and tapered legs.
She looked...delicious.
That screaming, agonizing, overwhelming hunger returned with a vengeance and he strained toward her, but the vampire kept a firm lock on his wrist, holding him easily in place. "Look at me."
David looked at her.
She smiled. "Yes. You are much more compliant now. Good. Do you want her, David?"
He groaned. "Yes. More than anything."
"More than you want me?"
David hesitated. He didn't know how to answer that one. He only knew he didn't want to piss her off again. "I..."
"You said something about not knowing my name before. Would you like to know it?"
David blinked at the abrupt shift of topic. He wanted the focus to remain on the apparent sacrificial offering chained up on the ground in front of him, but this was a tricky mental game the vampire was playing. He didn't want to make any more missteps. "Um...sure. I'd like that."
"My name is Narcisa Vulpes."
She watched him with a strange glitter of expectation in her eyes.
David coughed. "Okay. Cool."
"Do you like?"
David summoned a smile. "It's a fucking awesome name. Maybe the coolest ever."
"It's Romanian."
David nodded eagerly, as if no one had ever said anything so astonishing. "Wow. Romanian. That's super fantastic."
She relinquished her grip on his wrist. "Look at her, David. I selected her just for you. Are you pleased with my choice?"
David nodded again. "Pleased. Yeah. That's one word for it."
"Then take her. Drain the life from her. Complete your transformation."
David didn't need to be told twice, even as her choice of words carved a niggling slice of doubt in what little remained of his conscience. Was she saying he wouldn't fully be a vampire until he consumed the blood of an innocent? It seemed an obvious conclusion, but the fierceness of the ache churning in his belly rendered the question irrelevant. He was no longer capable of holding back.
He snarled and leapt upon the bound woman. Her eyes fluttered open as he shoved her legs apart and shoved his rigid cock deep inside her. She moaned as he moved inside her, becoming helplessly aroused by the invasion. David knew she'd be screaming and flailing at him if he was still a normal man. But he wasn't normal. He wasn't even really a man anymore. She sighed and strained toward him. He leered at her and opened his mouth wide. He felt a popping of jawbones as his mouth distended, felt his gums bulge as his teeth grew sharper and longer. His cheeks felt strangely elastic as his jaw dropped lower than humanly possible. He kept staring into the woman's eyes, expecting to see terror bloom there any moment. But she seemed numb to the reality of what was happening to her. She looked drugged. Perhaps the effect of some vampiric pheromone. He had no way of knowing.
He slapped her. Hard. "Look at me."
Her pupils remained dilated. Her smile was beatific. She moaned. "Yes. Yes. I see you."
He slapped her again, much harder than before. Her eyes began to focus more sharply on him. Good. That was what he wanted. "I'm going to kill you."
There it was. The terror.
It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
He ejaculated deep inside her as he snarled again and ripped out her throat. A jet of hot blood hit his face. The feel of it against his flesh was wonderfully warm. The bone-deep cold began to leach from his body. He clamped his mouth around the ragged wound, perfectly sealing it, and drank deeply from her. She moaned and writhed slowly against him, still aroused despite what was happening to her. He drank greedily, his throat bulging as he quickly suctioned every drop of blood from her body.
He rolled away from the corpse and sat up, grinning at Narcisa, who stood nearby with her arms folded beneath her breasts. She wasn't smiling now. The coldly appraising expression he remembered from the shopping mall was back.
"Enjoy yourself?"
The grin wouldn't leave his face. "Yes. God, yes."
"Feel any guilt for the life you've taken?"
"None."
She nodded. "Good. It's finished, then. There's nothing human left in you."
"Good fucking riddance."
Another nod. "Do you feel satisfied, as if you couldn't possibly drink another drop?"
He shook his head again. "Not even close."
Now she allowed herself a smile, a small one that slightly dimpled the corners of her mouth. "Care to join me in a hunting expedition?"
He surged to his feet and approached to within inches of her. He felt her cool breath on his cheeks, an indicator that she hadn't imbibed since partaking of the gray-skinned woman. And that had only been a taste. She was ravenous. He could smell the need on her. Sniffing it reignited his own thirst.
"I'll follow you anywhere."
Her smile broadened. "Good."
She clasped hands with him. A white radiance began to fill the cavern as the tactile world started to fade. This he remembered from those last moments on the bench at the shopping mall. He felt a little twinge of nervous anticipation as he realized what would happen next. The moments of fading consciousness, that strange sensation of ceasing to exist. He experienced a moment of the starkest terror as the process began, then relaxed as it continued, a numbness overtaking him as the world and consciousness itself faded...
7: INITIATION
He came out of the light and into the dark. There was a jarring sense of displacement, followed by a wave of disorientation. For a long, heart-pounding moment, he wasn't sure who he was or what he was. He was just a thing in the darkness, possessed of a rudimentary consciousness but no deeper sense of self. There was something oddly comforting in that. Then it came to him. His name was David Rucker. He was a man. Or formerly a man. He was something else now. Something stronger. Something better.
Something hungry.
Always fucking hungry.
The darkness puzzled him. It was dark and someone was screaming. There was an obvious conclusion. She had been toying with him. There would be no hunt. No rampaging exercise in wanton, unrestrained slaughter. He was still in Narcisa's secret place. He'd wind up chained to that cold cavern wall again, where he'd spend the rest of his miserable existence, gasping and starving from lack of---
The paranoia deserted him as his newly sharpened senses began to detect distinct differences between this place and that filthy cavern. They were in a house. A bedroom. Two figures writhed atop a dimly visible bed, covered by a single silk sheet. One of the figures, a woman, was screaming, but it was a sound of intense pleasure rather than pain. The air in the room was rich with an array of pungent odors, chiefly sweat and the musky scent of sex. He listened for a while as the couple on the bed fucked with admirable enthusiasm, both of them perfectly oblivious to his presence, at least for the moment.
He felt something touch his elbow.
Narcisa.
She smiled. "Kill them."
The woman on the bed made another high-pitched sound, but this time there was a note of surprise mingled with the passion. The man atop her grunted and chuckled softly, the smugly satisfied sound of a man who believes he has just taken his woman to previously unattained erotic heights.
David took a step toward the bed. He could see better in the dark now. There was no artificial light in the room and only the dimmest diffused moonlight filtered through the closed window shades. Seeing anything should have been next to impossible. Yet the shape of the bed was now crisply defined within the gloom, as were the shapes writhing on the bed. The man and woman were both young and athletic. The man's upper torso was heavily muscled, yet lean, likely the result of a balanced mix of cardio and strength training. The knowledge should have given him pause, but he felt no fear. Not the slightest flicker. This man would be a formidable opponent for any human assailant. But because David was no longer human, all he felt was a sense of heightened anticipation. In life, he would have been no match at all for this man. Now, though...now he would revel in tearing the smug son of a bitch to pieces.
The woman made a sharper, even higher-pitched sound of surprise. She was staring straight at him now, straining to make out the shape moving toward her in the darkness. David kept coming closer. The woman started pounding on her man's back when he reached the edge of the bed.
"STOP! STOP!"
She was screaming yet again, but this time in sheer terror. Her lover stopped in mid-thrust and craned his head around to squint at the darkness. He let out a startled gasp that made David smile. The shape of his body would be visible now against the faint backdrop of the moonglow seeping in at the edges of the large window directly behind him. The man disengaged himself from his woman and spun around on the bed, priming his body for attack. The woman scrambled away from him, going for a nightstand next to the bed.
A light snapped on. A lamp with a heavy brass base. The woman was still in motion. She was a tall blonde, maybe an inch or two shy of six feet, lean and muscled like her lover. She also had enormous tits. Real ones, too. He could tell from the way they moved and jiggled as she strained and reached for the handle of a nightstand drawer. The drawer came open and out came a handgun. Some kind of automatic. David didn't know much about guns, but he knew that
The man glared at him. "You people need to get out of here before we call the police."
Narcisa approached the bed, propped a bare knee on the edge of the mattress. "No one's calling the police tonight, dear."
The blonde waved the automatic at her. "Off the bed or I'll fucking shoot you both." Her lithe, toned body glimmered in a sheen of sweat, a result of the interrupted erotic exertions with her husband, boyfriend, whoever the fuck he was. The sight of her glistening skin stirred something in David, almost to the point of distraction. His eyes narrowed to slits as they traced the lines of her luscious curves. Drool collected at the corners of his mouth.
And now the woman was scowling at him, a mixture of alarm, disgust, and disdain flashing in her eyes.
David stroked his chin and continued to ogle the blonde woman. All he could think of was how much he'd love to feel those giant tits crushed against his chest. Only thing better would be the subsequent feel of her mangled flesh sliding down his gullet followed by the warm rush of her blood.
A blur passed before David's eyes. He heard a loud snap, followed by an agonized cry. The gun went spinning across the room. It banged against a closet door and dropped to the carpeted floor with a quiet thump. And now the blonde woman's right wrist was broken and hanging at an obscenely unnatural angle. She scooted backward in the bed, cradled her mangled limb against her chest, and screamed. The man tumbled sideways, falling prone on the far side of the bed. He gaped at the sight of his woman's broken wrist. His gaze jumped from Narcisa to David and back again, his face a study in wide-eyed, uncomprehending horror. He was a classically handsome type, with a chiseled jaw, piercing blue eyes, and short, spiky hair. The good looks and the athletic physique made him the kind of guy David would normally envy and even kind of hate. David knew he was okay-looking enough in his own right, but nowhere near this dude's league. This was the kind of guy who would always have whatever he wanted. Nice clothes, nice house, nice car, good job, and, of course, the hottest girl around. And he would certainly have more than enough scratch to buy that girl the flashiest, most expensive engagement ring possible, the kind David had been so desperate to give Janine.
Janine. Jesus.
It was the first he'd thought of her since being released from the chains. Thinking of her was like a slap in the face. A hard one. The terrified man's expression changed, became almost hopeful. Which was ridiculous. He was going to die. How could he not know that? But Janine's abrupt intrusion into David's thoughts must have caused his face to convey doubt about what he was doing. And, in fact, it did stir a mild flicker of conscience. He experienced a dizzying moment of surreality, during which it struck him as insanely absurd that he was a participant in an apparent torture-murder scenario. The sensation deepened as he imagined what Janine would think if she could see him now.
Mr. GQ slithered off the bed, stood erect, and backed up until he was against the wall. He glanced nervously to his left, where the bedroom door stood open. Any moment now he'd be making a dash for it.
David gave his head a hard shake, clearing it---at least temporarily---of thoughts of Janine. A nasty, smirking half-smile twisted one side of his face. "Not thinking of making a run for it, are you?"
The man was shaking. Tears leaked from his eyes. "Please. You don't want to do this. I know it...I---"
"You don't know shit."
The man must have read something else in his expression now, because he dropped any further pleas for mercy and made an abrupt break for the door. David hurried after him, tackling him in the hallway. He was laughing as he took the man down, an evil, nasty madman's cackle. He'd never moved so fast when he was alive. The man was screaming and thrashing, but David held him down easily, savoring the feel of the struggling thing beneath him. That's what humans were to him now. Things. And this son of a bitch certainly wasn't his superior in any way that counted at this point. His charmed life was over. No amount of money or charisma could save him from his fate.
David dragged the guy back through the open doorway and flung him across the bedroom. One problem. He'd held onto the guy's wrist too tightly and his arm came off at the socket. A bright arc of blood spattered the bed, the ceiling, Narcisa, and the woman with the broken wrist as the man's body flew through the air and smashed against the far wall. Narcisa was off the bed in an instant, eager to drink deeply from the man's severed arteries before he could bleed out. Her mouth opened and elongated before clamping over the wound. The man's head thumped back against the wall and his eyes glazed over as Narcisa fed, quickly draining the life from him.
The woman's screaming was getting louder and shriller. She sounded like a goddamned air raid siren. Time to put a stop to that. David didn't know where this house was or how close it was to its nearest neighbor, but it couldn't be a good idea to let that continue. He jumped on the bed and pounced on her, slapping a hand over her mouth. Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she continued to scream against his palm, which effectively muffled the shrill sounds. He positioned himself comfortably atop her, utilizing his vampire's strength to pin her in place, then he used his free hand to grip her broken wrist and twist it even further out of shape. He heard a grinding sound. Bones twisting and cracking. But he was careful not to use too much force. He wanted to hurt her, but he didn't want her hand to snap off. He wasn't ready to make her bleed out just yet. He wanted this to last.
An image of Janine's face abruptly appeared in his head..
His body abruptly went rigid.
I'm a monster. Oh, Jesus, I've become a fucking monster.
For a single flashing second, he felt like crying. But the pang of conscience was even shorter-lived this time. He made a mental note to quiz Narcisa later regarding how long he could expect to deal with these lingering traces of departed humanity. They were a serious drag as they were happening and were getting in the way of his fun. Just as her man had done, the woman detected the brief flicker of doubt by looking in his eyes. She stopped struggling.
Which was awfully considerate of her.
David's mouth snapped open, jaw unhinging as his teeth sharpened and lengthened. The woman's eyes went wide again. David tore a side of her slender throat open and clamped his mouth over the ragged hole. A hot gusher of blood filled his mouth and he drank deeply of it, greedily, as if he could never get enough. Which, come to think of it, was probably true. He drank and drank, keeping at it as the woman's body went still beneath him, until after she was dead and he'd suctioned out the very last drop. Sated, he pushed himself away from her and sat back on the bed, resting his head against the headboard. He felt warmer than he'd felt since the change. There wasn't the slightest trace of a chill. He smiled and savored the feeling, knowing it wouldn't last nearly long enough.
Narcisa crawled onto the bed, slithered over to him and straddled him. Her voice was a husky, hot whisper against his ear as she leaned into him, brushing his chest with her erect nipples.
"Fuck me."
David smiled. "Mmm...okay."
She mounted him, guiding his rigid cock up inside her wet center. Within a few moments, there was screaming in the room again. More than once as their lovemaking continued, David snuck glances at the dead woman next to him.
Stared at her unmoving eyes.
It made it better.
 \*
They fucked another time before leaving the house, this time in the shower with the water cranked to its hottest temperature. The scalding water sluiced the blood from their bodies as they writhed against each other and hungrily clawed at one another. Sharpened nails opened gouges in their flesh that wept blood but healed instantly. It was the most intense sex David had ever experienced and as it was happening he wished it would never end. While it was happening, Janine didn't exist. Nothing mattered but Narcisa and this incredible experience they were sharing.
But it did end and, inevitably, thoughts of Janine returned.
And this time they didn't abate instantly.
They were back in the bedroom now, sifting through the dead couple's respective wardrobes in search of suitable clothing. The blonde's clothes were a little big for Narcisa, who was shorter and more slightly built, but the difference wasn't so pronounced that she couldn't wear them. David and the dead man were the same approximate height, but Mr. One Arm had been thinner and his clothes were a snug fit. However, they would do until he found more appropriate attire.
Narcisa watched him as he sat on the edge of the bed and tried on a selection of the dead man's shoes. "You're thinking about her."
David grunted. "Huh. You can still read my thoughts, even though I'm like you now, but I can't read yours."
"I'm many hundreds of years older than you. It will be a long while before you are able to read anyone's thoughts, let alone mine." She pursed her lips. "And you're evading the question."
Another grunt. "I wasn't aware there was a question. Sounded like a statement to me." The athletic shoes he'd slipped on were too small. He tossed them aside and tried on a pair of hiking shoes, brown Timberlands. "But, yeah, you're right. I can't seem to keep her out of my head. She just keeps popping back in. It bugs the shit out of me."
"Oh?"
Narcisa's tone was neutral, but David knew he had to tread carefully here. She'd already made it abundantly clear there could be no room in his life for anyone other than her. Which, now that he was able to think about it with a clearer head, was sort of strange, considering she'd only set eyes on him for the first time less than a day ago.
Unless---
He frowned.
Unless that wasn't the case at all. It really didn't make sense that she'd focused on him so intently after chancing upon him randomly. Otherwise he'd be just another dead body piled atop a towering mountain of carcasses in her secret place.
"I've been watching you for months."
Oops.
Mind reader. Right. He was really going to have to stay cognizant of that. "Um..."
She shook her head. "Never mind that now. You were saying how it bothers you that you keep thinking of the cunt you'd been wasting your time with."
"Well...I don't think I phrased it quite that way, but...yeah."
She was staring at him very intently now. It was hard not to squirm under the power of that gaze. It took every shred of nerve he possessed not to look away. "There is a solution to this problem."
The Timberlands were a more acceptable fit. Still loose around the toes, but better. He stood up. "And what would that be?"
She smiled. "We cut out the problem at its root. We go see this cunt and..." The smile broadened. "We tear her to pieces and drink her blood together."
"I see."
"Do you have a problem with that?"
"I..." David fidgeted, shifted his weight from one leg to another. She would know if he lied. That was the problem. He sighed. "I honestly don't know."
Narcisa moved a few steps closer to him. "This does not make me happy, David. You may require further discipline. Would you care to spend more time in chains?"
He was trembling now. As much as the thought of killing Janine troubled him---and he was surprised to discover it troubled him immensely---the thought of being deprived of blood again bothered him more. "No. I'll do whatever you say. Whatever's...necessary. I trust you. If you think this is how I'll get past this problem, then that's what we'll do."
She laughed. "Of course we'll kill her, David. I wasn't seeking your approval. Killing the cunt has been on the agenda from the beginning. Of course, I could've done it already, but it's important to me that we kill her together. It's the only way we can bond in the way I want. And it's the only way I could come to truly trust you."
David nodded. "I understand."
The fucked up thing was that he did understand.
Completely.
8: OLD TIMES THERE ARE NOT FORGOTTEN
On the freeway now, heading into the suburbs of Atlanta. It was past midnight and the traffic heading out of the city wasn't too heavy. Narcisa sat behind the wheel of the BMW Z4 convertible, one hand on the wheel with the stiff wind blowing her midnight-black hair straight back. The car belonged to the blonde woman they had killed. The blonde woman he had killed, David reminded himself. That one was solely on him. It was still hard to think of himself that way. As a killer. But the oddness of it didn't make it any less true. He'd spent a few moments riffling through the dead woman's purse prior to their departure from the house. Her name had been Anna Cooper. According to her Georgia driver's license, she'd been barely twenty six years old at the time of her death, having had a birthday just a week earlier.
Her license photo showed a young woman with a radiant smile. A winning smile. He'd never seen anyone look so good in their driver's license photo. It was almost kind of nauseating. Not enough so to confirm her as deserving of a horrible death, of course, but it did make him feel somewhat better about it, albeit in a really twisted way.
"Humans don't deserve your sympathy."
David flinched. He'd been lost in his own thoughts, but now he glanced over at Narcisa. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes locked on the road.
"It's not sympathy. Not exactly."
"Oh?"
He shrugged. "What do you expect? I'm new to this whole killing thing." He recalled the sense of sick exhilaration he'd felt as he'd played with the dying woman's broken wrist. "It's definitely not sympathy, at least not more than a mild echo of it. I enjoyed killing her. I can't deny that. And yet there's this nagging little trace of a conscience now and then. It's that remnant of humanity that makes me curious, that makes me need to understand what I've taken out of the world."
Narcisa's head inclined slightly forward, a noncommittal half-nod. "I vaguely recall similar feelings when I was turned, but that's been so long ago now."
He stared at her for a long, silent moment, "So...how long ago, exactly, was that?"
"Too long ago to make sense to you, David. So long ago we are almost literally from different worlds."
David frowned. "Then why---"
She eased the BMW into the right lane and hit the blinker switch. David glanced to his right and saw a green exit sign looming just ahead.
"Um...what are we doing?"
"Stopping. Obviously."
He watched the green exit sign whiz by, his brow furrowing as the BMW's speed began to decrease. "Reason?"
She smiled without looking at him. "There's an all-night diner near here. Quaint little place. I..." She chuckled. "...dined there some time ago."
The car slowed some more, leaving the highway as its tires kissed the exit ramp, a gray loop that curled around behind a stand of tall trees. David saw bright neon through the trees. The diner, he assumed. "When you say you 'dined' there..."
"I slaughtered a half-dozen so-called innocents. This was before your time, back in the 1970s. I haven't been back since."
"And you're returning now...why?"
She smiled and shrugged. "Nostalgia. A wistful desire to revisit the site of fond memories. We're in a little suburb called Alpharetta. Unimaginative press types dubbed my previous visit here 'The Alpharetta Diner Massacre'."
David grunted. "I suppose you're planning a belated encore performance."
"Of course."
"How many people are we gonna kill tonight?"
"Many. Very, very many." She glanced at him. "Does that trouble you?"
"Killing doesn't trouble me. Possibly getting caught does. Surely we've each had enough blood tonight to last us a while. Doesn't it make sense to strike fast one time, like we did back there at that house, then lie low for a while?"
A broad smile spread across Narcisa's face as she tossed her head back and laughed without any of her usual reservation. Then she looked at David, a big smile still stretched across her face (though he noticed there was no hint of mirth in her pitiless eyes). "You're still thinking like a human. Getting caught isn't a concern." She reached out and touched his face, her fingertips tracking a cool path along his jawline. "New vampires are so adorable."
David frowned. "Do you make new ones often?"
"Depends on your definition of 'often'. I am surpassingly old. I last turned a human a decade ago. She was a disaster. An unruly, rebellious, insolent child."
"What happened to her?"
"I destroyed her."
David drew in a slow, shuddery breath and carefully released it. "Oh. I see."
The BMW pulled into the diner's mostly empty lot. Narcisa parked the car behind a big Ford F-150. She turned the engine off, twirled the keyring around a finger, and patted him once on the cheek. "Oh, don't worry. You're nothing like her. You're far more mature, for one thing. That's why I watched you for so long before drawing you in. I needed to be certain you were the one for me."
David felt uncomfortable again. He shifted in his seat, stealing quick glances at the brightly lit diner as he fidgeted beneath Narcisa's steady gaze. "How did you..."
"Choose you?"
"Yeah."
"Fate. You caught my eye one day several months ago while I was out people-hunting in the same mall where you were shopping for the cunt's engagement ring. That day you were engaged in something marginally more sensible."
David frowned and scratched his chin. "I was?"
She nodded. "You purchased a large television from an electronics store."
"Huh. Funny. I remember having the strangest feeling that day, as if someone was watching me. I kept looking around, trying to figure out who it was eyeballing me." He laughed once, a humorless sound. "I chalked it up to paranoia. I guess I should've trusted my instincts."
Narcisa shrugged. "Sometimes they really are out to get you, as the saying goes. The people I track only see me if I wish them to. That day I elected to stay invisible. So I could study you. And that's what I did, David. I followed you everywhere. Saw how you lived your life. Came to know all the things you cared about. By the time I decided to draw you in, I knew you inside and out. And I liked what I'd discovered. I knew I had to have you, had to make you mine. Forever."
Hearing all this was more than a little creepy. It wasn't every day you learned that a mysterious supernatural creature had been stalking you for the better part of a year. He supposed it didn't matter much anymore. She'd drawn him in, as she put it. She had turned him. It was done and there was no going back. It was best to just accept it and let her show him the way from this moment forward.
After all, he didn't want to wind up like that "insolent child."
She patted him on the cheek again. "Smart boy."
This time David didn't even cringe. The thoughts she'd read would reassure her that she'd made a good choice. And that felt really, really important at the moment. Right now he was her prized new pet, but she had him on a short leash. He sensed it wouldn't take too many mistakes to cause her to reassess her choice.
So don't make any mistakes, motherfucker.
And yet...
There was one more thing he had to know. "You remember at the mall, when you told me it was my choice, whether to go with you or not?"
Her eyes glittered with amusement. "Yes."
He forced himself to say it. "That was a lie. Wasn't it?"
"Yes."
Well, that pretty much said it all. It was what he'd suspected. And given the circumstances, pursuing it was less than useless.
She elaborated a bit anyway. "It's fun to play with helpless things."
"Okay."
"You learned that for yourself tonight, didn't you?"
He grimaced. "Right. Yeah. I guess I did."
"Good. Now then---let's eat."
They got out of the car and started across the parking lot toward the bright lights of the diner. It was a cool night, a fact emphasized by the stiff breeze that roughly brushed his face before shifting direction. He shivered and noted a chill was beginning to prickle his flesh again. It was disconcerting to realize how short-lived the warmth provided by draining out a human body was. Narcisa was "surpassingly" old. It was little wonder her secret place doubled as a mass grave that could rival any other in history.
Thinking of that wretched place prompted another question. "Why are we driving anywhere? Couldn't you just magic us to wherever we need to be?"
"I find driving soothing. I like the feel of the wind in my face. And I like the throb of the engine vibrating through my body. I like the sound of tires on the open highway. It's all so very...mmm...sexy. Few things are more sensually satisfying than driving a finely tuned automobile."
David said, "Huh."
A doorbell jingled as Narcisa banged through the diner's front entrance. Heads turned at the counter as they came strutting inside. Well, Narcisa strutted. David followed stiffly in her wake, his eyes darting in every direction, his nerves buzzing even though he knew there was virtually no chance anyone here could harm him. On the plus side, there weren't many people in the diner at this hour. A pudgy, gray-haired woman sat on a stool behind the counter near the cash register. She was reading a paperback romance novel and didn't look up as they entered. David guessed she was in her fifties. A younger man dressed in white was visible in the open kitchen area behind the counter. The cook, presumably. A skinny Mexican janitor moved a wet mop in slow circles over the tiled floor at the far end of the dining space. A waitress in a short skirt was bussing tables as they came in, loading dishes onto a black tray. The waitress was a slender woman with tired, red-rimmed eyes and the kind of blonde hair that came from a bottle, age probably just a shade south of forty. The only customers present were the three at the counter, all of whom were grossly overweight. Their massive bottoms overlapped both sides of the stools upon which they were sitting. Their bulging bodies strained the cheap Wal-Mart clothes they wore. Two were jowly, red-faced men, and the other was perhaps the single least attractive woman David had ever had the displeasure of setting eyes on. It was obvious the trio were all related somehow.
He couldn't suppress a smirk.
The family that dines together, dies together.
The gray-haired woman behind the register glanced up from the romance paperback as they approached the counter. She squinted at Narcisa for a moment, then her eyes went wide with shock. She dropped the book and hopped off the stool, instinct propelling her backward until her back met the partition separating the counter area from the kitchen. The stool toppled over and struck the floor with a clatter.
Narcisa beamed at the terrified woman. "Well, hello. We meet again. Long time, no see."
The woman opened her mouth wide and screamed with everything she had.
David cringed.
Murder and the joys of sadism were things he'd come to appreciate, but all the screaming that went along with those simple pleasures was a thing he could see tiring of in a hurry.
Narcisa glanced at him. "I didn't kill them all that night back in the '70s. This caterwauling hag was barely out of her teens then. Back then she was a hard-working young waitress. But now, apparently, she's paid her dues and gets to sit on her fat ass all night. It warms the heart to know she made the most out of the second chance I gave her back then. And all she had to do to earn that chance was slit her manager's throat." She smiled at the gray-haired woman again. "I suppose you left that part out of your account of the incident to the police, eh?"
The woman screamed throughout this speech.
David glanced around, becoming decidedly nervous again. Everyone in the place was watching them warily now, eyes shaded with confusion and heaping helpings of mistrust. One of the obese trio, the woman, shoved another thick strip of bacon into her mouth as she watched them. David had a sudden urge to seize her and fill her throat with every scrap of food in the place, just keep shoving it all in until she choked on it.
The waitress shot glares at each of them as she hurried to the counter and tried to engage the screaming woman. "Martha! Martha! What's wrong? Who are these people?"
Martha pointed a shaky finger at Narcisa. "It's her. The murdering bitch who killed all my friends in the '70s."
The waitress's eyes narrowed with obvious skepticism as she appraised Narcisa again. "Martha...this girl's barely more than twenty. She can't be the---"
Martha resumed her screeching: "IT'S HER!"
The two fat men at the counter glanced at each other. One of them wiped grease from his fingers with a well-soiled napkin and said, "Somethin' funny's happening here."
The other one answered, "Uh huh."
David guessed the trio's combined IQ might just reach the triple digits.
The waitress managed a strained smile as she addressed Narcisa. "Ma'am, maybe you and your friend should just go. Martha's overworked and tired and needs to calm down. We're awfully sorry for the inconvenience."
Narcisa giggled. "Oh no, we're not leaving. You see, she's one-hundred percent right. I killed Martha's friends way back when, with a little assistance from her, and now I'm back to further reduce the moron population."
The cook emerged from behind the partition. He clutched a large caliber revolver in a meaty hand. "Get out before I call the police."
Narcisa rolled her eyes. She leapt cat-like onto the counter, then dropped down on the floor behind it. This happened faster than anyone could blink. She pried the pistol from the cook's big hand, pointed the barrel at his face, and squeezed the trigger.
BAM!
The bullet blew a big hole through the center of the man's face and a bigger one out the back of his head. A spray of blood and bone fragments sailed over the partition and splashed on the sizzling oven on the other side. His big body dropped like a rock, toppling backward against a sink and knocking over stacks of just-cleaned glasses, which rolled off and shattered on the floor. Suddenly everything was chaos and noise. The Mexican janitor dropped his mop and made a run for the door. David intercepted him before he could get there. The man fought hard at first, landing a solid, hammering punch to the side of David's head that would have turned his lights out if he'd still been human. But David the vampire was unfazed. He grabbed the man's wrist and spun him around. The man continued to struggle as David drove him down to the floor. He took the feisty janitor out of the equation by breaking his legs. The loud snapping of bones was very satisfying. He then left the broken man squalling on the floor to deal with the waitress, who was the next to try for the door.
He got there well ahead of her, leering lasciviously as he blocked the door. "Sorry, not happening. We're just getting started."
Her eyes filled with tears and looked even redder than before. "Please...I have a kid."
David smirked. "Your kid had a mom." He chuckled. "Notice the tense I used?"
She fell to her knees before him, hands clasped together and held toward him. She looked like a penitent in church begging God for forgiveness for some transgression. "Please...please..." She shuffled closer toward him on her knees, tears etching lurid tracks in her mascara. "My baby..."
"You're pathetic."
David seized a handful of her hair and wound it around his right hand. She clutched at him and buried her face against his leg, her tears quickly soaking the fabric of his jeans. David tightened his grip on her hair, flexed his fingers, preparing to rip a hunk of it from her scalp. In the last instant before he would have done it, he felt one of her hands slide up his inner thigh and grip him by the crotch.
He smiled at her. "Ooh, now you're speaking my language."
She gave his balls a gentle squeeze and looked up at him with hope shining in her eyes. "Please...I'll do whatever you want. I'll make it nice. I promise."
He kept smiling. "I bet you would. You look like you know what you're doing down there. Then again, most shitty dive waitresses double as whores, don't they?"
She didn't let the abuse sway her, just kept stroking him through his jeans. She made sounds that mimicked sexual arousal. It was irritating. He'd never heard anything so transparently fake.
He snarled and yanked his arm up with sudden, devastating force, ripping fake blonde hair from her head along with a large chunk of ragged, bloody scalp meat. He had an instant to savor her wails of agony before something started hitting him. It felt like getting punched repeatedly. Hard. He heard the reports of the gun an instant later.
Holy shit, I'm being shot.
The blasts propelled him backward against the door. His knees buckled slightly but he didn't fall. He glanced down. His chest and stomach were riddled with oozing holes. Another shot whizzed by his head and ricocheted off the doorframe. He looked up and saw the obese, bacon-gobbling woman he'd regarded with such disdain aiming an automatic handgun at him. An open handbag sat on the counter near her almost empty plate. There was a look of smug satisfaction on her jowly face as he gaped in disbelief at her. Of everyone here, she was the last one he would have expected to offer any serious resistance. She squeezed the automatic's trigger again and another hole punched through his chest and exited through his back. He felt unsteady on his feet and realized the bullets had blown the glass out of the doorframe. The fat woman squeezed the trigger one more time, but this time the only result was an empty click.
David summoned a shaky smile.
The woman's smug look began to crack as she realized he didn't seem to be dying. To her credit, she didn't immediately lose her cool. She ejected the gun's empty magazine and reached into her purse. David frowned. How much ammunition could this woman possibly be carrying around?
He didn't get to find out.
Narcisa leapt over the counter again and landed agilely next to her. She seized the big woman from behind in a chokehold and gave her neck a powerful twist. There was a loud snap and she released the woman's body, which toppled forward and crashed into a table, sending chairs, condiment bottles, and salt and pepper shakers flying. The dead woman's male relations remained glued to their stools, their mouths hanging open in shock, their eyes shiny with grief and disbelief.
Narcisa looked at them. "You two won't be trying anything stupid, will you?"
They looked at each other.
One of them licked his lips and said, "No, ma'am."
The other one said, "Nuh uh."
Narcisa smiled. "Good. Stay where you are."
She moved past them, reached over the counter, and seized the still-cringing gray-haired woman by the front of her blouse. Martha started screaming again as Narcisa hauled her over the counter and began dragging her toward David.
David's head tipped backward as he watched them draw nearer. He felt achy all over, throbbing twinges in his joints and at the back of his head. It felt sort of like having a bad case of the flu, minus the fever. He would've welcomed a fever right now. His bones felt like they were turning to ice. His heart began to slow as a crippling lethargy overtook him. It felt like he was dying.
Narcisa said, "You're not dying. Not yet."
She was a few yards away now. Martha was still struggling, but Narcisa controlled her with impressive ease, propelling her forward with one arm bent behind her back. David's head lolled forward as the two women came to a stop within a few feet of him. Martha changed tactics, lashing out at him with her free hand. Sharp fingernails raked across his face, opening gashes in his flesh that only dribbled a small amount of blood. David blinked slowly and dragged numb fingers over his shredded cheek, frowning at the miniscule flecks of crimson visible on his fingertips.
He blinked again and squinted at Narcisa.
She looked...fuzzy. Like something from a fading dream. Yet the intensity of her ice blue eyes allowed him to maintain some semblance of focus, penetrating the cloud descending over him like a halogen lamp penetrating dense fog.
"You're hurt, David. You need to drink. Now."
The fingernails of Narcisa's right hand lengthened and became talons, then ripped open the captive woman's neck. Blood jumped from the ragged wound, splashing the front of David's stolen shirt. Narcisa's nostrils flared as she glared at him over one of the dying woman's shoulders.
"Drink. Take her. Now."
David didn't need to be told again. The smell of the blood was powerfully intoxicating. The heady aroma made his eyes pop wide open as it filled his nostrils. He grabbed Martha by the front of her shirt and yanked her toward him. She managed one more gurgling scream before he snapped his mouth open and clamped it over the still-gushing wound. He lapped up blood with an eagerness and greed that far exceeded even the horrible, aching need he'd experienced after being released from the chains. He made hungry sounds deep in his throat as he drained the blood from her in barely more than a minute. Martha's corpse fell away from him and dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. He wobbled a little as he pushed away from the ruined door, grinning broadly as the infusion of hot blood woke up every nerve-ending in his system. He felt instantly wired and eager for more, as if he'd just snorted up several lines of really high quality cocaine. It felt like he had lightning in his veins. The rush was incredible. Mind-blowing. He had to have more, more, more, now, now, now.
He touched his face, felt thin scars where fresh gashes had been mere moments ago. He ripped his shirt open and examined his belly and chest. There were puckers of raw, healing flesh where once there'd been holes. The wounds continued to heal as he stared at them, the puckers fading and giving way to unblemished, healthy skin. It was a miracle. He frowned. No. That was the wrong word. It was a religious word, purely the province of the holy. And he was unholy. He should be dead, but he wasn't. No, wait, he was dead. He started laughing. It was so confusing. And yet liberating. The most glorious thing about it was that he didn't much care. Life and death? Those were mortal concerns. He was like Narcisa now. A vampire. He was going to live---well, exist---forever. And he could do whatever he wanted. That kind of made him a god, didn't it? He laughed harder. So maybe it was a miracle after all.
Narcisa was laughing, too. Giggling, really. She sounded more like a naughty schoolgirl than an ages-old mass-killing supernatural creature. She was staring at him, very intently, and he realized she seemed to be reacting to the mad gleam in his eyes. One thing was very obvious---she liked what she was seeing.
She abruptly spun away from him and fell atop the wailing janitor. Her mouth opened and her head snapped toward his neck. There was a sound of ripping flesh and soon bright red blood was flowing all across the white floor tiles. He watched her slurp blood from the twitching Mexican for a moment, feeling the hunger grow inside him again.
Then something caught his eye.
He grinned.
The waitress.
He'd almost forgotten about her in the wake of the fat woman's assault, but now he was pleased to see she was still in play. A bullet had winged her in the shoulder---nice aim, you stupid dead cow---but she was still alive. And still possessed of enough fighting spirit to make another go at escaping. That also pleased him. It would make things more fun. He remembered the feel of her hand caressing his crotch through his jeans and decided he'd make her finish what she'd started. Then he'd kill her. Maybe he'd kill her first and then violate her. He grew even more excited at the thought, thrilled by how wickedly decadent and powerfully evil it made him feel. There was no reason he couldn't do that. He wasn't human. He was beyond morals. He could do anything at all and it wouldn't matter one fucking bit.
She was crawling across the floor, making slow but steady progress and leaving a trail of blood behind her. She was nearly to the counter. Poor thing. He imagined the tentative beginnings of hope she must be feeling now, how it must be burgeoning inside her, becoming more real with each passing second, with each hard-gained inch of ground. Her likely escape route wasn't difficult to deduce. She would stay on the floor once she got behind the counter, then make her way into the kitchen and flee via a rear exit. She might even have made it if she'd been just a little bit faster while he was distracted. He trailed after her, treading quietly, not wanting to draw her attention just yet. He wanted that hope to grow inside her just a little more, until it was a fire consuming her---right up to the moment when she was certain freedom was in her grasp. He tingled with anticipation at the thought of crushing that hope.
He kept hanging back, watching as she reached the counter and began to drag herself behind it. In a moment only the cheap black pumps on her feet were visible. David winked at the two piles of greasy blubber masquerading as men still ensconced atop their stools at the counter. They were nearly indistinguishable, with their grimy blue collar clothes and blunted physical characteristics that marked them as products of the same tainted gene pool. They differed in only one significant way. Both were clearly terrified, but one's scowling expression indicated a deep loathing for David. His contempt was obvious in the defiant gleam in his eyes and the sneering twist of his lips. David frowned. It was irksome.
He decided to stop fucking around. He stepped behind the counter and stopped the waitress's progress with a foot planted solidly in the small of her back. She squealed in frustrated terror and clawed at the floor tiles, shredding her nails in the process. Her escape attempt effectively interrupted, David shifted his attention to the sneering fat man.
"What's your problem, fatty?"
A corner of the man's mouth twitched. "I ain't got shit to say to you, scumbag."
David's annoyance deepened. "Scumbag? Do you really think you're better than me? You're a giant bag of lard. You're not fit to judge a turd-throwing contest, much less your betters."
"You and that whore of yours ain't my betters, asshole."
David glared at the man, willing him to wilt beneath the supernatural fierceness of his stare. It was a thing Narcisa would have done with ease. With barely any effort at all, really. But, as with so many other aspects of vampirism, David just didn't have her level of ability, at least not yet. The scowling big man barely flinched.
David seethed.
You fat motherfucker. I'll show you.
David surged toward the counter, reaching for the big man's accusing eyes, intending to claw them from their sockets with the black talons popping from the ends of his fingers. One hand curled around the collar of the man's work shirt and dragged his upper bulk up onto the counter. The other hand reared back, ready to strike. Maddeningly, the man's expression didn't change. He looked resigned to his death and determined to remain defiant until the end. David had an idea. A good one. He smiled. He'd pluck the man's eyes out of his skull and force the fat fuck to swallow them one at a time.
Yeah, let's see how stoic you are then, cocksucker. I'll break you yet. I'll---
David screamed and arched his back as something sharp and cold slammed into him from behind.
That goddamn waitress! Fucking bitch!
His foot had come away from her back in the now aborted assault on the lippy fat man. She'd seized the opportunity, knowing she'd almost certainly never have another one. There'd been a knife around. A big one. It made sense. This was a diner, after all. It was probably some kind of carving knife. She was leaning into it with all her might, driving the big blade deeper inside him. He felt it slice into one of his lungs and screamed again at the pain. She might not be able to kill him with the knife, but that didn't make the physical agony any less real. Luckily, as a vampire, there was a way to deal with that.
Blood.
Narcisa loomed up behind the fat men. Her blazing blue eyes pulsed with malevolence. She opened her mouth wide, flashing long teeth stained crimson from freshly imbibed blood. She moved with deadly quickness and silence, reaching for the fat men and tearing both men's throats out simultaneously. As always, the sight of thick streams of blood gurgling from newly severed veins sent David into a frenzy. He propelled himself backward and slammed the waitress into the partition. This caused her to cry out, but also had the effect of driving the blade even deeper inside him. But David didn't care about the pain now. Yet again, all that mattered was blood.
He pushed away from the waitress and turned around to face her, savoring the fear in her tear-laden eyes. He reached an arm behind his back, tendons popping as the limb twisted and contorted in ways a normal human arm could not, and began to pull the big blade out. It emerged with a moist sound that would have made his stomach turn over before he became a vampire. He licked blood from the blade and shuddered at the sweet, intoxicating taste. His own blood intermingled with the blood of those he'd killed. There was something so satanically beautiful about that.
He sighed, an almost peaceful smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "You almost made it, didn't you? Almost got away."
She sniffled. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. "Please. I'm begging you. I just want to live. You can do anything you want to me, just please let me live. Please don't orphan my kid. Please..."
David's smile was almost a sad one now. "I'm sorry. I think you know that can't happen."
Her eyes went wide as he dragged the blade across her slender throat. Beautiful blood burbled from the hole he'd sliced in her jugular vein. This wound wasn't like the ragged holes he'd created with his own teeth. It was clean. Neat. Surgical. There was something entrancing about the way the woman's blood pumped from the thin line of the incision. The holes he made with his teeth were just as effective, but this had its own special allure. Staring at the wound was making his cock painfully stiff. He watched the blood issue forth a moment longer, then snapped his teeth around her tender throat. She gasped and went stiff at first, then relaxed as he began to drain her blood, eventually sagging against him. Her chin settled against his shoulder and her arms encircled his waist in a weak embrace. It was almost like being held by a lover.
It was this impression more than anything else that made him act on his earlier impulse. Once she'd been drained, he lowered her corpse gently to the floor and carefully undressed her. Her nude body was lovelier than he'd imagined, with fuller breasts and slightly wider hips. He removed his own clothes, repositioned her legs, and let out a snort of animal satisfaction as he entered her.
When it was over, he put his bloody clothes back on and returned to the dining area, where Narcisa was sitting at a table with her legs crossed. The head of the insolent fat man was cradled in her lap.
She smiled at him. "Enjoy yourself?"
"Yes."
"Feeling any pangs of conscience this time? Any thoughts of you-know-who?"
He shook his head and answered honestly. "No. Not this time."
"Good." She tossed the head to him and he reflexively caught it. "That's for you."
David turned the head over and stared into the man's glassy, unmoving eyes.
Not so mouthy anymore, are you?
Narcisa stood and started toward the door. "We should go."
David looked at her. Then his head swiveled side to side as he surveyed the carnage. Everywhere he looked he saw blood and mutilated corpses. His smile widened as he thought of the field day the press would have with this story once a bit of research linked it to the earlier diner massacre. The scene was so spectacularly grisly it might even make the national news, though he doubted the authorities would ever mention the word "vampires" in their accounts of the incident to the press
He looked at Narcisa, who stared back at him with obvious impatience from the door. "Do people know about us? Law people, I mean."
She pushed the door open, taking care to avoid slicing her fingers open on broken glass. She paused there, staring evenly at him. "About me in particular or vampires in general?"
"Um...both, I guess."
She shrugged. "I'm a legend in some circles, but mostly they think I died a long time ago. Some have pursued me before, but they always give up the chase in the end. I'm a perpetually elusive shadow to them, impossible to catch or kill. Others of our kind aren't so skilled. And, yes, the law does know about us. Most governments have secret units dedicated to pursuing vampires and...other things."
"Other things?"
Narcisa's expression indicated she'd said all she intended to say on the subject. "We should go."
She left then and David watched the door bang shut, the impact with the frame rattling more glass fragments loose. He looked at the head in his hands again, smiling as he stroked the blood-stained hair.
He took it with him as he followed Narcisa back outside.
9: ACCEPTANCE
On the freeway again, the BMW speeding north out of Alpharetta. David stared at the head of the dead man as cold wind brushed his face and whipped his hair about. The head was on the dashboard, wedged up tight against the windshield. There was something pleasing about the way it looked there. He'd heard stories about serial killers saving trophies from their kills, but he'd never understood the phenomenon until now. He liked having this physical reminder of what he and Narcisa had done. There was just one problem---it was a piece of organic matter, subject to decay. The flesh would rot and the fat man's face would melt away over time. He made a note to save something more permanent next time. A wallet or article of clothing. He supposed he could save the fat man's skull, but...hmm, where would he store it?
He glanced at Narcisa. "Your secret place...will I be living there with you?"
She kept her gaze on the road. "Of course you'll live there. What part of 'you belong to me' do you not understand?"
David didn't respond to that. When she'd said that before, it'd been an abstract kind of thing. He'd understood what she meant, sort of, but at the time he'd thought she would likely kill him after a period of imprisonment and torture. Now it seemed the role she had in mind for David was a kind of kept man. A companion and plaything, but by no means an equal. A part of him bristled at the thought. The smarter part of him realized he was lucky he wasn't just another emaciated bag of bones hanging from chains until he bled out or starved to death. The realization didn't entirely erase his resentment, but it prevented him from saying anything stupid.
He frowned.
Except that---
Narcisa laughed.
Shit.
He'd forgotten about the mind-reading thing. Again. Damn.
Narcisa laughed some more. "Relax, David. It's natural to have thoughts like that. You'd be an unthinking dullard otherwise and therefore uninteresting to me. But you're a smart boy. You know your limitations."
"I'm no match for you and never will be."
She nodded. "Correct."
"You'd kill me if you ever suspected I had any serious intention of getting away from you."
"Also correct."
He sighed. "And there'd be nothing I could do about it."
She patted his knee. "See? I knew you were smart."
They drove in a surprisingly comfortable silence for several minutes after that. David's mind kept flashing back to all the incredible things he'd done over the last few hours. Multiple murders. Rapes. Torture. Necrophilia. All things that would have disgusted his former self. He was happy to find he was still feeling no lingering flickers of conscience. The only things he did feel were a new surge of arousal and a reawakened hunger.
He couldn't wait to kill again.
And to do...other things.
David winced at a sudden high-pitched burst of sound behind the BMW. It was followed by a pulsing strobe of blue light. He stretched his neck to peer at the rearview mirror. A police cruiser was hanging tight on their tail.
He glanced at Narcisa. "What do we do?"
"Pull over, of course."
She eased her foot off the BMW's accelerator and applied pressure to the brake, slowing quickly and smoothly as she guided the car to a stop at the road's shoulder. The police cruiser pulled to a stop behind them, but the cop didn't get out of the car right away. Several long moments passed. After everything he'd experienced tonight, David knew he shouldn't fear any human, but he was anxious nonetheless. He recognized it as an echo of how he'd felt any time he'd been stopped by a cop as a living man, but knowing that didn't entirely soothe his nerves. He reached for the head on the dash, figuring he should stash it somewhere. It reminded him of how he and some friends from his youth had frantically shoved beer cans under their seats during another stop a lifetime ago.
"Don't do that."
A hand on his arm. Narcisa, squeezing him. Hard.
"Leave it."
David let out a big breath and settled back in his seat. "Okay."
Finally, someone stepped out of the police cruiser. David heard a crunch of booted feet on gravel. Another glance at the rearview mirror showed a heavily muscled white man dressed in standard cop blue and equipped with the usual gear. His sidearm was holstered, but a big hand rested on its butt. David flinched at the memory of the fat woman's bullets slamming through his body. Bullets might not kill him, but he really, really, really didn't want to get shot again.
The cop reached the BMW's driver's side door and bent slightly at the waist to peer at them. "Evening, folks. License and---"
David watched the man's face, saw it go slack.
He'd seen the head on the dash, just as Narcisa had obviously intended. The cop's fingers curled around the butt of his gun and the weapon began to slide out of its holster. David was in motion before he even realized what he was doing, twisting and surging up out of his seat in the last moment before the gun could clear the holster, moving so fast he would only appear as a dark blur to the cop's eyes. He launched himself at the startled, backpedaling man, hitting him with tremendous force at center mass, exploding the air from his lungs as he drove him farther backward. The cop staggered out onto the freeway and toppled backward, landing hard on asphalt. The gun flew from his hand, skittered across the road and disappeared into a grass median. David pounced on the man again before he had a chance to recover, tearing so much of his throat out it nearly decapitated him. Blood burbled and flowed like an intoxicating wine, filling David's nostrils with its lovely aroma as it stained the road beneath them. There was a blare of horns as cars swerved to avoid the twisting figures in the road. One driver of a Lexus SUV was so startled she swerved too hard and went speeding into the median, where her luxury utility vehicle proceeded to flip several times before stopping in a grinding crash on the opposite side of the freeway. David laughed and drank deeply of the dying man's blood.
Then he felt hands on his shoulders, pulling him away. He snarled and fought for an instant, but the hands would not be budged. He relaxed. Narcisa. He wanted more of the man's blood, but not at the risk of displeasing her. She steered him away from the road and he lurched toward the BMW. She tightened her grip on him and steered him away from the car, guiding him toward a stand of trees beyond the road's shoulder. David was still wired from the fresh infusion of blood and laughed with wild abandon as he allowed her to lead him into the darkness of the woods.
The laughing stopped as white light began to displace the darkness.
"Oh," he said, sobering almost at once. "Magic again. Where are we going?"
She didn't answer. There was no chance as the white light glowed brighter and the fuzzy feeling he recalled from before of disembodied near non-existence wiped out conscious thought. He relaxed and knew a few moments of seemingly timeless bliss. Then the world began to coalesce around him again, darkening and solidifying. He felt the ground beneath his feet and remembered his name as the last of the white radiance fizzled away. They were on a suburban sidewalk somewhere. He heard a snatch of conversation in the distance, saw rows of respectable houses on either side of an immaculate street.
Narcisa stood in front of him, smiling. "Recognize anything?"
David frowned.
He glanced to his left and then to his right---and froze.
Narcisa laid a hand gently on his shoulder. "It's time, David."
He turned to fully face the house that was obviously their destination.
Janine's house. Her parents' house, actually.
Narcisa leaned into him, whispering fiercely in his ear. "Are you ready to do it, David? Are you ready to rip that cunt to pieces for me?"
David shuddered.
Then he smiled and squeezed Narcisa's hand. "Yes. Yes, I am."
"Good. Who do you belong to, David?"
"You. Only to you."
"Let's do it, then."
Still holding hands, they started across the manicured lawn toward the house where he'd once shared warm meals and laughter with his beloved's family. The house where he and Janine had spent many late nights plotting their bright future together.
David and Narcisa climbed the steps to the front porch.
Narcisa rang the doorbell.
10: AND IN THE END...
David sat shaking on his knees in the middle of the blood-spattered living room, squinting against the bright sunlight shining through the large bay window behind the Martins' plush leather sofa. He remembered almost everything now---everything up until the moment after he and Narcisa climbed the steps to the Martins' front porch. What happened after that was an enigma. It wasn't that the memories were hazy. They were just gone, like a file permanently deleted from a hard drive. No matter how hard he strained to remember, he came up empty.
Obviously something had gone wrong. Not because the Martins were all dead. That had been according to plan, after all. The sense of something wrong derived from the array of emotions raging inside him. Guilt. Anguish. Grief. Regret. A sense of loss so profound he felt utterly hollow inside. All things he should be incapable of feeling. These were human emotions, and he was no longer human.
Or...was he?
Perhaps yesterday's absence of those emotions was part of some trick Narcisa had played on him, a demented mind game designed to degrade him and forever taint his soul. She was powerful almost beyond comprehension. Wasn't it possible she'd manipulated his thoughts and impressions, had somehow immersed him in a convincing illusion or delusion? Which would mean he wasn't a vampire after all, just some gullible sucker she'd subtly coerced into participating in a slew of appalling homicides. It sounded like a plausible scenario and yet...it didn't feel right. Because even in the midst of his grief and confusion, the scent of blood was driving him half-mad.
He lifted a shaking hand to his mouth and tasted dried blood with the tip of his tongue. It wasn't as electrifyingly potent as the fresh stuff, but it did light up his senses, stilling his tremors and bringing everything into a crystalline focus. The problem was it wouldn't last long. He needed more than a taste. He licked more dried blood from his fingers and rose smoothly to his feet.
A closer examination of the scattered body parts revealed enough information to confirm that virtually every member of the Martin family residing in the area had been present for the slaughter. Janine's parents, Ed and Margaret Martin, sat on the sofa, their heads lolling, facial features hanging slack. Ed's belly had been ripped open, his abdominal cavity scooped out and its contents flung across the room. Loops of intestine hung from a slowly twirling overhead ceiling fan. One of the man's kidneys was wedged in his mouth. Margaret's blouse was in shreds. Her breasts had been torn from her body. David began to feel slightly sick again as he cataloged the atrocities. He licked more blood from his fingers to quell the nausea.
More of Janine's relatives were quickly accounted for. Her uncle, Bob Martin, had been reduced to a limbless torso before finally being killed. His stumps had been cauterized and his face was frozen in a mask of eternal agony. A stench of burned flesh hung heavy in the air. The torso was propped in a corner by the front door. Carol, Bob's wife, was dead, too. Her head sat atop one of Bob's shoulders. The rest of Carol's distinctively plump body seemed to be missing, which was strange. Janine's brother, Michael, was also among the dead. Except for the ragged hole in his throat, his body was mostly intact. David squinted. Or was it?
David crossed the room to where Michael's body lay sprawled in front of the large entertainment center. The corpse was on its side, limbs splayed in a way that made it look as if he'd been reaching for something behind him when he died. David stepped over the body for a closer look and immediately gagged. Michael's lungs lay on the hardwood floor behind him, where they'd been left after being pulled out through the enormous, ragged wound in his back.
It was all suddenly too much. David staggered out of the living room, stomach heaving as he made his way by feel to the kitchen. The first thing he saw when he got there was the open oven, which provided the answer to the mystery of Margaret's missing body parts. Her charred remains were stacked on the oven racks. The stench of burned flesh was heavier in here and David gagged again. He started shaking again, almost uncontrollably this time, and desperately tongued the remaining traces of blood from his fingers. It helped only a little. His teeth chattered. He was freezing. He needed fresh blood and he needed it yesterday. As soon as fucking possible.
He staggered through the kitchen until he bumped up against a wall by the counter. He turned and pressed his back flat against it. There was something else he was forgetting. It seemed critically important that he remember it, more important than anything else by far.
What the hell was it?
Oh, yeah.
He almost laughed when it came to him, it was so obvious.
"Narcisa!"
Where was she?
He had to assume she was still alive. Still undead, he reminded himself. Nothing short of a thermonuclear strike could kill her (and he had his doubts about the viability of that or any other apocalyptic method). So either she was still here, lurking somewhere, playing with him, or...she'd deserted him. He didn't know which possibility terrified him more.
"NARCISA!"
He screamed her name over and over until his lungs were burning, but no answer came. The silence taunted him and ignited fires of paranoia. Something inexplicable had happened during the night, somewhere in that gap formerly occupied by his missing memories. He recalled what she'd said at the diner about secret government units that hunted things like her. Had some shadowy X-Files-type operatives caught up with her and killed her? It didn't seem likely, but he supposed it was at least theoretically possible. And if she'd died, was that somehow connected to the apparent resurgence of his conscience? Had the severing of their mental connection brought it screaming back to life?
Or was that just another psychological hiccup, a very strong echo of his former humanity? He certainly hoped so. Because one thing was absolutely certain. He'd done many abominable things since falling under Narcisa's spell. All those murders...they were all real. As were the other things. The rapes and the...corpse violations. He couldn't bear the thought of enduring existence with a functioning conscience with those blood-soaked memories swirling endlessly in his head.
He pushed himself away from the wall and returned to the living room, pausing only a moment to shudder again at the carnage all around. Then he continued to the front door, hauling it open and knocking over Bob's mutilated torso in the process. He stepped outside, squinting his eyes against the bright sunlight. He knew it should be hot. It was a cloudless, sunny summer day in Georgia. But he felt colder than ever. At least he wasn't melting in the sun like a vampire in some cheesy movie. It wasn't much, but it was something. He shivered and hobbled to the edge of the porch, where he craned his head side to side in a desperate search for Narcisa. She was nowhere in sight, but an old lady out for a morning stroll was headed in his direction, flabby old arms pumping as she power-walked down the sidewalk.
David ducked back inside, slamming the door shut and turning the lock. He couldn't risk being seen by any neighbors, at least not until he'd devised some kind of viable strategy for dealing with his situation.
He frowned.
Wait a minute...
He opened the door a crack and peered outside again. The power-walking old lady had reached the Martins' block. She was one house away. David opened the door wider and stuck his head outside, taking a longer look around. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the vicinity. He stepped out onto the porch again and waited until the old lady was directly in front of the house. Then he used his vampire speed to zip out to the sidewalk, slap a hand over her mouth, and whisk her back inside. A kick to the door slammed it shut again. The force of the kick sent the brass door knocker up and down a couple times. David's teeth were in the old woman's throat before the knocker was still again. She flailed against him with her weak little fists for a moment, but she stopped when he wrenched his head hard to one side and tore a huge chunk of flesh loose from her neck. He closed his mouth over the wound and drained her fast. When she was bone dry, he let her body drop to the floor. He felt better instantly. Everything was in perfect focus now. His conscience was quiet again. Thank fuck for that. Maybe the blood kept that at bay, too.
He smiled.
It was so good to see clearly again. So good to---
Something just at the edge of perception was nagging at him. It took him a moment to process it. Then he tilted his head as he turned toward the coffee table and peered at the basket of magazines, where Janine's head was wedged in beneath the basket handle atop a copy of that month's Vanity Fair.
He moved closer to the coffee table.
Suddenly his heart was beating faster---and it wasn't just from the recent infusion of fresh blood. He hadn't been thinking straight when he first regained consciousness. His perceptions had been off. Everything was out of whack. It was hardly a surprise that he'd jumped to a wrong conclusion.
He lifted the head out of the bag of magazines and held it up for a closer inspection. It looked almost exactly like her. Same long blonde hair, a shade so bright it almost looked white. Same delicate facial structure, including those striking cheekbones. The eyes were the same color, too, a blue as pure and breathtaking as the sky on a cloudless summer day. A day like today, in fact. It was easy to understand why he'd mistaken Lisa Martin for her older sister. Lisa was only a year younger than Janine, and the sisters' resemblance to each other was so pronounced many assumed they were twins. A casual observer would never be able to tell them apart. But David knew Janine's face very well. Now that his initial shock at waking up in this slaughterhouse had waned, he could see clearly that this was Lisa's head. A tiny, almost invisible mole by her left ear gave it away. There were other telltale factors, including a subtle difference in the size of the head, but it was that mole that really sealed the deal.
David set Lisa Martin's head on the coffee table and did another careful survey of the living room. If he'd missed something that important, maybe there were other things he was missing. He began to tremble as he concluded this fresh inspection and was left with a single, inescapable conclusion---Janine wasn't here. And he was just as certain she hadn't been in the kitchen. Those had clearly been Margaret's remains stuffed into the oven. The body shape was all wrong to be Janine.
So where the hell was she?
"Janine!"
No answer.
He screamed her name another time or two to the same result. Maybe she wasn't here. It was possible she hadn't been present for the slaughter. She did live here, but on occasion she would spend the night at a friend's place.
Or, more often, at his apartment, to which she had her own key. That was it. It had to be. It made perfect sense. She hadn't seen him in more than a day, nor would she have heard from him. Janine loved him. She would've been frantic over not being able to locate or contact him. She almost certainly would've gone to his place in a search for answers, perhaps would even have spent the night there.
There was an easy way to confirm this.
He circled the coffee table, bent over the corpses on the sofa, and fished Ed Martin's iPhone out of a trouser pocket. He tapped in Janine's cell number and put the phone to his ear. It rang once. Then he jumped as a familiar noise began to emanate from somewhere inside the house. He moved away from the sofa, straining to locate the sound. He passed out of the living room and stood at the bottom of the staircase to the second floor. The sound was louder here. It was clearly coming from upstairs. The dial tone continued to buzz in his ear as he began to ascend the stairs. By the time he was halfway to the second floor, the sound was clearly identifiable as Janine's ringtone, which was a snippet of "Telephone" by Lady Gaga.
He reached the second floor landing and rounded a corner, heading fast down a hallway. There were two open doors, one to the left and one to the right. A quick toss of each room turned up nothing. He hadn't expected to find her in either one, but he needed to be thorough. A closed door stood at the far end of the hallway. Janine's cell had gone to voice mail and the ringtone had stopped playing, but he didn't need to hear it anymore to know the sound had been coming from behind that last door.
David shoved Ed Martin's phone in a hip pocket and cautiously approached the door. He curled fingers around the doorknob and placed an ear against the thin wood. Moments passed. There was no sound. Then he heard something. A muffled whimper. Heart hammering again, he tested the doorknob. It wasn't locked and turned smoothly in his hand. He pushed the door open and saw Janine sprawled across a bed, arms splayed behind her and tied to the wrought iron headboard.
He experienced a moment of vast relief.
"Janine---"
Her eyes went wide as she saw him come into the room and she began to jerk against the lengths of rope binding her to the headboard. The gag in her mouth muffled a scream. David felt something twist deep inside his guts. The truth was unavoidable. She was afraid of him. No, more than that. Scared to fucking death was closer to it. Terror mixed with disgust. Which could only mean she'd been here the whole time, had probably witnessed his participation in the torture and slaughter of her family. There was nothing he could say to her to vanquish her terror, so he kept his mouth shut. An "I'm sorry," regardless of how sincere, clearly wouldn't cut it either. That twist in his guts became more pronounced as he imagined how she saw him now---as a monster.
As a horror show freak covered in the blood of her loved ones.
David moved farther into the room, leaving the door open behind him. He peered closely at Janine's nude form. Someone had stripped her. Narcisa? Another frustrating puzzle to which he didn't have an answer. A white envelope with his name written across the front was attached to her stomach with a strip of duct tape. Janine squealed and jerked against her bonds again as he bent over her and peeled the envelope from her flesh.
He ripped the envelope open and read the brief note.
David,
Last night was wonderful. Truly the most enjoyable evening I've spent with another person in many years. I'm afraid we overdid it, though. I should have told you earlier---overindulgence sometimes results in a morning after state much resembling an alcoholic hangover. I have returned to my secret place to sleep, but I have left you with a final test. I have also left a way back for you in the basement of this house. But you must hurry as it will close by nightfall.
Bring the cunt's head with you.
Love,
Narcisa
David let the envelope and letter flutter from his fingers and drift to the floor. He had some answers now. A kind of blackout likely accounted for the gaps in his memory. He had no reason to doubt Narcisa. "Overindulgence" was a more than accurate description of last night's dark work.
He made eye contact with Janine and smiled. "I'll be right back. Just have to check on something."
He left the room and vaulted down the stairs, then hurried into the kitchen and tore open the door by the pantry that led down to the basement. Ordinarily it was very dark down here and you had to tread carefully down the rickety wooden stairs. But the radiant white light made it easier than usual. He descended the stairs to the bottom and stared at the source of the light for several moments. The light was beautiful. Entrancing. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to go toward it. The light subsumed an entire corner of the basement. It danced and flickered, beckoning to him. He longed to step inside its radiance.
But he couldn't.
Not yet.
He forced himself to retreat from the basement and hurried back to Janine's bedroom. She squealed again when she saw him. He went to the bed and sat beside her. He put a hand on her stomach and rubbed at the sticky residue left behind by the duct tape with the ball of his thumb. She tried to twist away from him, but he pressed his hand down flat.
"You're not going anywhere."
She threw her head back, stared straight up at the ceiling. Tears began to spill from her eyes, staining the pillow beneath her. His conscience stirred again. This was the woman he loved. Or had loved. He didn't really want to hurt her.
Did he?
"I'm sorry. I really did love you."
He climbed fully onto the bed and curled himself around her. She didn't flinch away from him this time. She was done fighting. Resigned. David sighed and relished the familiar and comfortable feel of her nude body beneath him. He closed his eyes and just concentrated on that for a while. He'd always liked the way their bodies fit together. It always felt right. Like coming home. It was just as nice now as it had ever been. He could almost imagine things were as they had been, that he and Janine were still going to have the future together they'd dreamed about.
But that wasn't possible now.
He opened his eyes and angled his mouth closer to her throat. The sight of her steady pulse beating there made his hunger flare anew.
He was a vampire.
She was human.
There was no way to reconcile the opposing sides of that equation. Nothing to do but drink her blood until---
His brow furrowed as he thought hard.
Wait a minute now.
What if...
He didn't know if he could do it. There was so much Narcisa hadn't taught him yet. It could go wrong. But what was the alternative? Suddenly David's mind was going a million miles an hour as he struggled to grasp all the implications and possibilities.
Impossible.
There was only one answer.
Go for it.
David snarled and flashed his fangs.
Then he buried them deep in Janine's throat and drank her blood.
 \*
Nightfall.
The last flickering rays of burnt orange leeched from the horizon. A black 2010 Volkswagen Jetta sped south down the interstate, headed for Florida. David watched the speedometer, careful to keep his speed just north of the 70 mph legal limit. He no longer feared the police, but he was determined to be more cautious from now on. About everything. He wanted to avoid any additional blackout scenarios if at all possible. And he didn't want to tangle with the cops again just now, so soon after their latest meal at that convenience store.
Janine stretched and groaned in the passenger seat. She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. She whispered huskily in his ear, "Hey, sexy."
He smiled at her. "You're the sexy one."
Another groan. Another exquisitely sexual twist of her body as she adjusted her position in the seat again. She was clad all in black now. Black leather pants. Black blouse. Black boots. Black belt with silver studs. Even her hair was black now, courtesy of a cheap dye job the night before. Her idea. She thought the "makeover" suited her change in lifestyle. David had to admit she looked great.
Not just great.
Hot.
It hadn't been a sure thing by any means. He could easily have killed her. In the end, he'd just done it by turning his thoughts off and allowing instinct to guide him. It had been sloppy. He had taken almost all her blood, but somehow he stopped himself in time, ripping his wrist open and forcing her to drink the blood from his veins. And it had worked. Somehow it had really fucking worked.
He'd turned her.
And if anything, she'd taken to the whole vampire thing more easily---and with far fewer qualms---than he had. He was happy, content to be with her again. The blood-drinking and killing aside, much of the fundamental aspects of their relationship remained the same. They loved each other deeply. Her sense of humor still delighted him (though it was a little darker now). And they again were making plans to be together forever. The only difference was that now "forever" potentially meant literally just that---an eternity spent in each other's loving arms.
David smiled.
Who said there was no such thing as happy endings?
The only dark cloud on the horizon was the question of how Narcisa would deal with what he had done. He had no doubt she was furious at his rebellion. Though he tried not to let Janine see it, she knew he was scared. Narcisa was far more powerful than the two of them combined. They couldn't hope to successfully fight the older vampire if she chose to come after them. David secretly suspected a confrontation was inevitable. The one consolation he had, the one slim sliver of hope, was time. A week had elapsed since he'd turned Janine and there'd been no hint of pursuit.
Maybe she'd decided to let them go.
Perhaps she even secretly admired his display of independence.
Probably not, but it was something to cling to anyway and that was better than nothing. Wasn't it?
Another glance at Janine.
Another surge of lust at that sexy smile curling her blood-red lips.
Another glance at the rearview mirror.
Another moment spent waiting.
Watching.
Hoping.
Feeling the need to ride the rush again creeping up on him once more.
As the road ahead curled away into endless darkness.
About The Author
Bryan Smith is the author of numerous novels, including Depraved, The Killing Kind, The Freakshow, and House of Blood. He lives in Tennessee with his wife, Rachael.
Visit www.bryansmith.info for more information.

