Death of an Immortal (11 page)

If not, he could just wait for Horsham to find him. It wouldn’t take long. In Terrill’s weakened state, Horsham would make short work of him. He wouldn’t fight back. For Mary’s sake; for Jamie, and for all the other innocent victims.

But Terrill found he wasn’t quite ready to give up. Not yet.

The butcher closed at 5:30, so he needed to get going if he was going to get there in time.

#

He tried taking the back roads, but there was no way to get past the railroad tracks without taking one of the main arteries. He hadn’t gone more than half a mile before he heard a siren.

Terrill didn’t hesitate. He took off, turning back onto the darkened side streets. He ran a red light, then another, and the cops backed off.

He slowed down, taking right turns so he didn’t have to run any more lights.

They were ready for him. He turned another corner and saw three police cars arrayed on the road ahead of him, blocking it. As he slowed, three more came whooping up on him from behind.

Terrill was boxed in. He jumped out of the car and ran into the nearest yard and down the side of the house.

All thoughts of giving up, all meditations on redemption, left him. He was vampire, pursued by his mortal enemy, mankind. He headed into darkness, his keen vampire senses finding tiny gradations in the level of light. He found himself at the end of an alley with a rocky hillside above him.

He could see the paths on the hillside clearly. The darker it was, the more clearly he could see. It was the obvious escape route.

But he turned aside and ducked through a hole in the side of an old standalone garage that was being used as a storage shed. He made his way to the darkest corner and crouched there.

He could hear search dogs barking and howling nearby. They wouldn’t know what to make of him; his scent would have no meaning to them. They would whine to their masters, wondering what they were supposed to do.

But the dogs could see well in the darkness, better than their handlers. It was inevitable that they would make their way down this alley. It was an obvious escape route.

He heard the cops a few minutes later. The humans, too, had sensed that he would run into darkness. They, too, made it to the end of the alley and looked up at the hillside.

Terrill saw the flashlights going by, and heard the trudging and tripping of the humans as they made their way up the rocky slope with exclamations and curses.

But one light remained. Terrill heard a growl, and he kept absolutely still.

A vampire in darkness cannot be seen unless he moves. Humans can often sense the danger and will search for the cause, but rarely see it in time. Terrill blended in with the dark wood behind him, as solid and as unmoving as it was. The dog poked his head through the hole in the side of the garage and growled, and the human squeezed in after, running the beam of his flashlight around the dark interior.

Terrill closed his eyes. The light went directly past him.

Then the cop muttered something about wishing he was eating dinner at home and dragged the reluctant dog out of the garage. The dog hadn’t seen or smelled Terrill either, but it trusted its primitive instincts more.

#

Terrill held still for what seemed hours, until suddenly, he started shaking. Once he started shaking, he couldn’t stop. That had never happened to him before.

He hadn’t eaten for over a day. His wounds were unhealed. But most of all, the cross was burning into him. He could almost feel the shape of it, could almost feel it glowing, consuming him.

For the first time since he’d been Turned, he had no food, no shelter, and no friends.

The cost of redemption is always high
, he thought.
Otherwise it wouldn’t mean anything.

Pain alone was not enough. It meant nothing unless he helped others. Unless he helped Sylvie.

Chapter 17

Late in the afternoon, someone knocked on the RV’s door. Horsham pulled one of the curtains aside an inch. The sun was still burning brightly. Still… the door was in the shade. He threw it open and stepped back from the daylight.

“Hey, neighbor!” It was the young couple from Rhode Island, Bill and Peggy, who were taking a yearlong sabbatical in a rundown VW minivan and blogging about it. Horsham had already decided he’d feed on them last, since people were bound to notice the disappearance of a blog. Then again, maybe not. Out of curiosity, he’d looked them up online, and while the blog had started out strong and enthusiastic, it was petering out with each wearying mile. They’d already spent most of their reserves, and they had the whole second leg of the trip to go. Horsham smelled defeat.

“Hi,” he said, friendly, but not too friendly. He couldn’t invite them in. Pieces of the driver, Shepard, were still scattered around the floor. Fortunately, he hadn’t begun to stink yet.

“Have you seen Brenda and Dave?” Peggy asked. “We were going to go to a movie.”

“No, haven’t seen them. Can’t have gone far.”

Brenda and Dave were tied up and unconscious on the lower tier of Horsham’s bunk bed. He planned to feed on them before heading out after dark.

“Weird,” Bill said. “They usually take their RV when they go anywhere. Well, if you see them, let them know we were looking for them.”

“You bet,” Horsham said. He’d automatically picked up the American accent and idioms, and now sounded like he was from the Midwest somewhere. Such mimicking was a talent most successful vampires had. They blended in innocuously or they were discovered: there wasn’t much in between. Horsham was wearing Shepard’s clothes, cheap duds that had probably been bought right there at Walmart, rather than his own tailored outfit.

He closed the door and went back to his laptop. He’d been online all day with his computer experts back in London, asking them to do a search of all major financial transactions in Bend. He’d also had them hack into the local police database.

It appeared that Terrill was already on the run. A search warrant had been served on the motel room where he’d been staying. Apparently, from the police chatter, some damning evidence was found. They were looking for his car.

That was inconvenient. Horsham didn’t want Terrill found by the police first. Then again, as crazy as Terrill had been acting, he was probably still capable of outfoxing the local constabulary. And the pressure was useful. It would force Terrill into the open.

Horsham had tried to put himself in his old mentor’s place. Why was he here? What was he hoping to accomplish?

It had to do with the dead girl. Terrill had managed not to feed on humans for a couple of decades. Undoubtedly, he was feeling remorse, just like the last time Horsham had seen him.

#

One in a thousand victims of vampires became vampires themselves. There was no way of knowing in advance if it would happen. It almost wasn’t worth worrying about. Most vampires feasted on their victims, ensuring there would be no reanimation. Occasionally, they’d leave a corpse undisturbed to see if it would Turn, out of curiosity, or loneliness, or because they somehow felt sympathetic toward their victim. Almost all these corpses remained cold. Wasted meat.

Mary was still in her wedding dress, but it had changed in color from virgin white to blood red. She looked peaceful, only a couple of punctures in her neck, almost delicately placed to do the least damage possible.

“I couldn’t let you go through with it,” Terrill was saying. “I’m sorry.”

Horsham fell to his knees beside her. The anger didn’t come at first. The thirst for revenge that would sustain the rest of his existence was still buried under the numb realization that she was gone.

He even let Terrill rest a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. She had died, and somehow Horsham still hadn’t made the emotional connection about who had killed her.

“If she is meant for you, she’ll come back,” Terrill said. “I couldn’t let you marry a human, Horsham. Never trust a human.”

The old rule barely penetrated Horsham’s consciousness. He’d heard it a million times, and yet somehow he’d never thought it applied to him. It never applied to Mary.

He had revealed himself to her only the week before, showing her his true nature. She stood naked next to the bed, staring down at him in shock. Then she made the sign of the cross.

He cringed, and she turned white at his reaction. She fled, half clothed, back to her room. For the next two days, she spent every moment in the local church, unwilling to even look at him.

On the third day, she reemerged, a determined look on her face.

“You shall never kill again,” she said.

“Very well,” he agreed, uncertain that he could succeed, but intending to expend every ounce of willpower trying.

“I will save you from damnation,” she said. It was her new goal, her reason for being.

Horsham didn’t care, as long as she stayed with him.

Now, Terrill was saying something about being sorry, about wishing he hadn’t done it. The hypocrisy of it suddenly bloomed in Horsham’s mind. He stood and pushed Terrill away, fangs and claws fully extended.

Terrill lowered his head and left.

He returned that night, and they sat at opposite ends of the room, staring at Mary’s corpse. She didn’t rise that first night, or the next. But on the third night, as both of them drowsed, the corpse sighed.

She rose up and looked around her, confused. She looked down at her freshly washed white wedding dress and stared at the backs of her hands. At that moment, the hands became claws.

She’d be ravenous, Horsham knew. He’d killed a calf each morning of the vigil and now he rose to bring the freshest one to her. She started to eat, and then stopped. She threw the meat onto the floor and looked at the blood on her hands and started to keen. The loud, high, mournful lament froze both vampires where they stood.

Dawn was breaking; the light came in through a small crack in the curtains and landed on Mary’s feet, which started to smoke.

“You must get away from the light!” Horsham shouted.

She looked at him, confused.

Then it was as if she suddenly understood everything. Horsham would always remember that look, a look that said she knew exactly what had happened and why, and yet accepted it.

“I love you,” she said. He started to move toward her, but she turned her gaze away, and it was as if the light had gone out for him. He stopped.

She was looking at Terrill in pity. “I forgive you. I must be your last.”

She rose up from the bed gracefully. She walked to window and threw open the blinds.

Terrill and Horsham instinctively jumped to the darkened corners of the room. But Mary stood in direct sunlight. She turned and looked at them, and gave them a beatific smile as she began to flicker. She opened her arms as the flames began to rise from her body, starting at her feet and moving upward.

She didn’t move as she burned, and the last thing Horsham saw was her smile, enclosed in fire.

#

Terrill begged for forgiveness. For days and weeks, he was beside himself with guilt. At first, Horsham was so stunned he didn’t react. And then, the more Terrill pleaded, the more Horsham’s anger grew.

The day came when he whirled on his mentor and attacked, with everything he had ever learned. But Terrill was stronger and more experienced. He warded off the attack, but maddeningly, he didn’t fight back.

Horsham finally gave up, collapsing to the floor, sobbing.

“I’m leaving, my old friend,” was the last thing Terrill said to him. “I hope someday you can forgive me. I, for one, shall never kill again.”

#

If Terrill had stuck to his principles, it was possible Horsham might one day have forgiven him. But to kill Mary, and then abandon the very reason he’d killed her! It was too much for Horsham to take.

He’d grown powerful over the last decades, honing his hunting skills even as Terrill became weak and his skills deteriorated. Next time they met, the outcome would be different.

The laptop was flashing a message from London. A $100,000 check had recently been submitted from a Prestigious Insurance company to a Sylvie Hardaway. There was no record of Prestigious Insurance existing, and it turned out that the beneficiary was the sister of Jamie Lee Howe.

The check was being held for confirmation of funds.

“Cancel the check,” he typed. He had spent the past few years infiltrating every corner of the Internet, preparing for just such a day. “Refuse all access to funds in this account and follow any thread to any other account opened by the same person, no matter what name was used.”

He closed the laptop with satisfaction. Terrill was without shelter, hunted, and now he was broke. The trap was closing.

Dusk was just beginning. There was time for a snack, and then it was on to the hunt. His two meals were awake now and screaming into their gags, squirming and staring at each other, bug-eyed with fear. Horsham decided to keep the meat fresh as long as possible.

He started on the legs and worked his way up.

Chapter 18

Terrill was curled in the corner when he heard scratching at the side of the garage facing the house. A small dog was worrying the ground just outside, unable to smell the vampire but sensing his presence.

“What are you doing, Tyson?” Terrill heard a voice call from the house.

The dog yelped and ran halfway across the lawn before turning suddenly and running back to the garage, almost slamming against the wooden slats.

“What’s in there, boy? A rat? Raccoon?”

The dog yelped in agreement to both queries.