Vampires in Devil Town (8 page)

Nine

Jacob stood in the middle of the living room, staring down at the broken twisted remains of the television, blood dripping from his right hand. The beating he had administered to the TV made him a little more tired but it didn’t make him feel any less scared. Bad stuff was still coming, he knew. He couldn’t put the thought out of his head.
  He was restless, wanting to do something but not sure what.
  He went into the kitchen to put some coffee on.
  While the coffee brewed, he bandaged his wounds.
  Once properly, if unprofessionally, bandaged he cleaned up the vomit on the living room and uprighted the corn plant in front of the windows, throwing down some towels where the rain had blown in.
  That done, he went back into the kitchen, grabbed a white ceramic mug from the cupboard and poured a cup of very strong black coffee. He filched a cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt and headed back out onto the balcony.
  He sat down on the damp weather-beaten wooden chair he kept out there, surveying the chilly night surrounding him.
  How could something so beautiful be so dangerous? He was thinking about both the town and the night.
  Smoking his cigarette, he relished the impenetrable silence around him. He tried not to think about anything in particular, tried to go blank, but he couldn’t help it. His mind went in circles, continually thinking about the image he had seen on the TV, substituting Rachel for Mr. Leavingworth, flashing back to two years ago... the people in the woods. The whole twisted night. The violence of it all. The Devils.
  People could tell him they didn’t exist.
  They could tell him there were no such things as Devils.
  He wouldn’t believe them.
  He saw more that night,
felt
more that night and every night since to think that it was anything other than something supernatural. The unexplained. Wasn’t “supernatural” the word we used to explain the unexplained.
  Teenage boys hunting and trying to kill a teenage girl was natural. It was nature. It was nature at its most cruelly debased level but it
did
exist within the realm of human nature.
  People who became monsters... who became something else, was not natural. That was what Jacob couldn’t explain. That was supernatural—outside the realm of
human
nature.
  And there was more.
  So much more.
  His thoughts were feverish and circular, relentless.
  He quickly finished his cigarette and tossed it out onto the street, wishing it wasn’t the only thing he could cast away.
  He went into the bathroom to take a hot shower and change clothes, wash away the dirtiness of this evening and put on a fresh skin. Might as well start his day early. He didn’t think he would be getting any sleep tonight.
  

Ten

Bones stood in the cold night listening to the sluggish chirping of the bugs in the distant woods.
  Fucking bitches, he thought.
  After giving chase to the girls and losing them once they got over the road he had come back to this strange little hollow where he had brought the van. The house was in front of him and that meant those people were in there. If they weren’t there, Bones knew, he would not be able to see the house.
  It never ceased to amaze him, this world of magic these people had brought him into. And this house. This house that followed them like they were turtles and it was their shell or something.
  Bones didn’t want to go inside but knew he would have to. If he simply tried to escape them, they would hunt him down. They would find him. And then it would be like the last time. The time in Illinois when he could not find a single person to bring to them. The time when he had almost gutted Rain in her sleep just so he wouldn’t have to feel their wrath. Just so he could please them. He wanted so much to please them. He loved being in the house as long as he had some bleating, pleading prey in tow.
  He didn’t want this to turn out like last time.
  That wound had not yet healed. It ran, a jagged zigzag down his spine.
  They had opened him up, told him they needed blood, and they had suckled from him. The cut was really nothing more than a flesh wound but it stung his pride and it hurt him to sit upright.
  Ilya and Ernst. Ernst and Ilya. Anything to please them.
  He had never told Rain he knew their names. He didn’t want to share with her. And he guessed, deep down, he just hadn’t trusted her. He knew she would try some shit like the stunt she pulled tonight. He was certain he would be the one laughing in the end. Ernst and Ilya did not like people to get away. They didn’t like people existing who knew their secrets. Or maybe they didn’t mind if they existed, they just wanted to drag them down to where they were, somewhere deep within the house, wherever the house happened to be.
  That was another reason Bones dreaded confronting them with tonight’s escapee. Bones knew all about Rachel Stokes. He had received sort of a briefing before going to invade her house. She had burned them in the past. They didn’t go into great detail and Bones had enough sense to know this was because she had somehow put one over on them, making them feel stupid, making them feel less powerful. She had, somehow,
hurt
them.
  And he had blown it. Now she would have her guard up. If this girl had defeated them in the past then he guessed it was entirely possible for her to beat them again and this agitated Bones. It meant all the hard work he had put into this thing, all those innocent people he had killed, had all been for nothing. He didn’t want to let that happen. He wanted to see this thing through to the end, until he was like Ernst and Ilya.
  Powerful.
  Bones stopped at the van, reached in, and pulled his pack of cigarettes from the console in between the two front seats. He lit his cigarette and stared at the house while he smoked.
  Sometimes he wondered what he had gotten himself into but that was only fleeting. Soon, the world would be his and never mind if that stupid bitch didn’t want to come along for the ride. She obviously didn’t have the stomach for it anyway. A weak will. She couldn’t carry through with anything. He would see to it she died before he left this sad little town that was so important to Ernst and Ilya.
  Thinking of how he would destroy Rain diverted him from his doubts and led him through the smoking of his cigarette. It would be beautiful, when he finally put his hands on her again. He knew he would have to fuck her before killing her. He wasn’t about to hand her over to them without having at least one last little taste for himself. Rachel Stokes might be theirs but Rain, Rain was his. And he wanted that to be the last thing she remembered before dying so she knew what she was missing by running out on him.
  Bones tossed his cigarette out into the oily-looking grass and approached the house.
  He walked up the crooked steps and, without knocking, pushed the door open.
  Zack slept on the couch.
  Bones didn’t like Zack at all. He had been with them since California and he was clearly Ernst and Ilya’s favorite. Bones didn’t have any idea why. The boy seemed so weak, almost effeminate. And he didn’t have to kill. He only had to bring people to Ernst and Ilya. Keepers, as Bones thought of them. Those that stayed in the house. Below.
  These were not cast-offs. These were going to be part of the army of the Devils, dead souls to swell the ranks and make them more powerful. Bones didn’t really know how Ernst and Ilya determined some people were keepers and some people were meat. He figured it wasn’t his place to question that. Besides, since Bones had been given his special task, that may have changed. Maybe now Zack
was
doing the grocery shopping.
  He wanted to spit on Zack, sleeping so peacefully there on the couch. He hadn’t done a damn thing since California. He had merely sat around reading some damn book Ernst had given him, a book Bones wasn’t allowed to read. And now he was in the process of seducing some high school girl Bones figured held some interest for Ernst and Ilya. Probably getting a little on the side from her. Fucking fag.
  No one was around. What would it hurt? he thought.
  He coughed some phlegm into the back of his throat and projected it out toward the sleeping boy. It landed on his shoulder, quivering there with Zack’s breathing. He didn’t stir and Bones guessed it didn’t really solve anything but it made him feel a lot better. Like he had one on Zack now. Next time maybe he would think about slicing his throat while he slept there. That way he could be Ernst and Ilya’s favorite and put any question of who was better out of their minds.
  Bones knew exactly where they were. They would be under the house. All he had to do was walk to the back of the house and go around to the underside of the staircase. There was a door there that led downstairs. Bones wasn’t really supposed to go down there on his own but they had led him down there a couple of times. It wasn’t anything spectacular. Of course, the only thing he had seen was the main room, occupied by a large table where Ernst and Ilya took their sacrifices. They never let Bones watch them eat. He didn’t even know why this was something he wanted to do other than he thought he could watch Ilya do just about anything.
  She was the real reason he was doing all of this.
  Ilya had become something like his entire reason for existing these past few months. He thought about her all the time. He wanted to be Ernst just so he could be near Ilya. Everything he did, he did with the hope Ilya would let him touch her. It didn’t even have to be in a sexual way. He killed for just momentary contact with her. He didn’t know how long he could resist before he might try something that would get him killed. Still, if it meant dying with his tongue in her mouth or his dick between her legs, then he thought it might be worth it.
  Bones opened the door beneath the staircase, the blue light stronger down there, coming up to meet his eyes.
  He took a deep breath and slowly descended the stairs.
  About halfway down, the stairs changed from old worn wood to stone. Bones nearly slipped with the transition. There wasn’t any kind of banister to hold onto. He went slowly, feeling the death grow more palpable with each step. That was the only way he knew of to really explain it. Above, in the house, above the ground, things and people were alive. Below the house, there was nothing but death. The smell of it, dark and fruity, seeped from the stones around him.
  There were ghosts beneath the house. Or something like ghosts. Bones had always thought of them as ghosts with teeth. In the end, that was really what Ilya and Ernst were—ghosts with teeth. They were things more than people. Things that had died a long time ago and, having somehow escaped the clutches of death, had also managed to escape many of the physical trappings of life. He had heard their stories. He had heard them from Zack and he had heard them from some of the people he had met while passing through the whole haunted country. While not everyone knew of them as the Devils, he didn’t have to go far to find a tale about a man or a woman. A horrifying vision in a nightmare. An eater of the soul. A taker of children. A myth. A legend.
  While it was their beauty and their power that had initially attracted Bones to them, it was also their beauty and their power that held him in fear. Whatever they told him to do, he would do it, because he was terrified of them. And as more time passed, as he saw more and more of Ilya and Ernst, the more his fear grew. The more his fear grew, the more his respect grew. The more his respect grew, the more he wanted to be like them.
  The stairway ended at a heavy wooden door. This was the door Bones was never allowed to enter without knocking. There were many times he had wanted to brazenly swing the door open, trying to catch them at something they didn’t want him to see. To get just a taste of the deeper mystery.
  Bones took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
  “Enter,” he heard Ernst say from the other side.
  Bones put his hand on the old iron handle and pushed the door open.
  Ernst and Ilya sat at the large stone table that looked like it had somehow grown from the stone of the floor. It never mattered where they were, what state or town they were in, this scene was always the same. There wasn’t any explanation for it, Bones knew.
  “Hi,” Bones said, feeling dumb. He never knew how to greet them.
  Neither of them said anything. They simply stared at him.
  “You lost her,” Ilya said.
  Bones nearly corrected her and said, “
Them
. I lost them.” But he thought better of that. He didn’t want a bad situation to seem even worse.
  “Yes,” Bones said. He guessed they could tell by his injuries.
  “This is unacceptable,” Ilya said.
  “I know.”
  “If you know,” Ilya said, “then why did you bother coming at all. Why didn’t you run off when you had the chance?”
  “Because I wanted to let you know I could make it up to you.”
  Ilya smiled. It was a sick smile. It didn’t make Bones feel good at all. It was the kind of smile somebody wore when they were making fun of you.
  “I’m sorry to say there isn’t going to be another chance.”
  “Whaddya mean?”
  “This is the end of the line.”
  “But I want to continue on with you.”
  “There is no continuing on. This is where we stop. This is where we belong.”
  “Give me one more night. I promise I’ll bring you someone tomorrow. Hell, I could even bring you someone by morning, if you give me another chance.”
  “No. It had to be her. You’re finished now.”
  Bones felt anger flicker up through his body. “It can’t be over. Not just like that. Not after all I’ve done.”
  “It can if we say that is how it is going to be. What do you expect to get from us anyway?”
  “I want to be like you.”
  “What does that mean?” Ilya asked. “Everyone seems to be saying that, ‘I want to be like you.’ But you don’t have any idea as to who or what we are.”
  “Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea.”
  Ernst stood up, unfurling his height, and looked at Bones.
  “I have something I want to show you,” he said.
  “I’d like to see anything you have to show me,” Bones said.
  “Follow me, then.”
  Ernst turned to his right and walked across the large stone room. Bones followed him. There was a door on that side of the room, to Bones’ left, that he had never noticed before. He wondered what was going to be in the room. He wondered if Ernst was about to show him the big secret, the thing that would help him to understand all of this.
  Ernst pulled on the heavy door and it swung out from the frame.
  The room was dark, not lighted up in the deathly blue that lighted the other rooms of the house. Ernst walked slowly over to a wall and held his hand up to a candle. He touched his finger to the wick and the candle came alive, bathing the room in a shimmering soft orange light.
  Bones heard the whimpers before he saw the other thing in the room.
  It had been hiding in the corner and now it half-crawled, half-walked out into the middle of the room.
  Bones stared at the thing, trying to figure out what it was. It looked like it had once been human. There was something about it that reminded him of the Elephant Man in that creepy black and white movie he had seen as a child. It just didn’t look right. It was like it had all human parts but they were put on all wrong. Its arms dangled limply away from its body. It wore only a tattered old loin cloth of sorts. Knobs ran up its ribs. Its toes curved more out than in while the feet themselves seemed to be going in the opposite directions.
  “What do you think of it?” Ernst asked.
  Bones didn’t know what to say. He thought it was horrible but he didn’t know if that was what Ernst wanted to hear. He knew he was already on thin ice and he wanted to think carefully about any questions he was going to answer.
  Ernst supplied the answer for him. “Hideous, isn’t it?”
  “Yeah.”
  “Do you know who that is?”
  “I have no idea.”
  “That is the last person who messed up.”
  A sharp spike of terror jabbed at Bones’ spine. His throat closed. His heart shimmied. It was like the whole illusion he had been led to believe was now shattered and he wanted to get as far away from it as he possibly could.
  “The last person we trusted,” Ernst said.
  
Run
, he thought.
  He could still do that, couldn’t he? Sure, he had never seen Ilya or Ernst move in any way other than that creepy crawly horror movie villain style and he thought if he just turned and bolted then he would be able to make it safely out of the house and into the night and then he could get into his van and disappear completely. Forget he had ever seen the Devils. If he could just get to the van then he could get away from all this. Ernst and Ilya didn’t have a van. If he could get there then he had absolutely no doubt he could find safety and freedom somewhere.
  Or he could go after Ilya. Leap on her. Press his nose against her scent. Ram his hand up that dress and feel the magic between her legs.
  His muscles tightened and he turned, legs already bending to charge ahead.
  He ran into Ernst who felt as hard as rock and fell down to the ground, onto the actual rock. Not much difference. Somehow Ernst had managed to position himself in front of the door faster than Bones could have imagined anyone moving.