Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (42 page)

“We just hung around to help support each
other at first,” Dancer said.

“And it started,” Fancy said.

“But what does all this got to do with being
bait?” Cory asked.

“Hard data like numbers are hard for us to
do,” Fancy said.

“But emotions are easy,” Dancer said.

“We can act like living walkie-talkies,”
Fancy said.

“If one of us is the bait but somehow ends up
out of sight…”

“The other one still knows what’s going
on.”

Cory had to admit that sounded like a smarter
plan than him hiding out alone by that tunnel, but still none of
this sat easy with him. He remembered the way those two attackers
had come for him, and while a large portion of himself was pleased
he wasn’t the one who would be waiting on them again he didn’t want
either of his only two friends putting themselves in the same
position.

But this did need to happen eventually, and
preferably tonight. They had about as much of a plan as they
possibly could by now.

“We need to do this then,” Cory said. Again
it came out a lot more timid than he intended. FancyDancer looked
just as worried, though. He didn’t know whether to take comfort
from that or start to be frightened again.

It really didn’t
matter which of the two stayed down by the tunnel, since they were
both equal in speed, strength, or any other factor that might keep
them alive if needed. That didn’t make it easy for them to decide,
though. Cory got the impression that they were somehow silently
arguing over who it would be as they carried him back downtown and
to the parking ramp. Neither wanted the other to put herself in
harm’s way, and both of them were stubborn enough that they
wouldn’t back down. When the argument finally got so intense that
they started doing it verbally Cory mentally flipped a coin and
declared that Fancy would be the one on the ground. To his surprise
they both abided by his decision. The fact that he was able to make
it at all was a shock to himself.

It was only about one in the morning by the
time they made it back to the tunnel. A brief rain earlier in the
night and the fact that it was in the middle of the week meant that
the streets were fairly quiet at the moment. They did a quick check
of the area as inconspicuously at they could before they decided
that none of the Dusters were lying in wait for them. Cory wished
there was some way they could guarantee that the Dusters would even
show up, but he had to admit there was a very good chance they
might sit until morning and have nothing to show for it.

Leaving Fancy down on the pavement, Cory and
Dancer went up the stairwell to the top of the parking ramp where
they would have a complete view of the entire alley below. Dancer
probably could have made it to the top the easy way with just a
couple well-placed jumps, but Cory was in still far-from-perfect
condition. He stumbled on the steps a couple times on the way up,
although the pain at least was at manageable levels. The blood
FancyDancer had given him before they left the apartment—not
poisoned and definitely not tasting like human this time—had helped
his recovery.

“I’m still not sure I’ll be able to help much
if anything happens,” Cory said timidly as they reached the top
floor.

“You’ve actually seen these people while we
haven’t,” Dancer said. “Just stay alert for them and you’ll help
plenty.”

Cory noticed a strained look on her face as
they approached the railing. There were no cars up here right now,
giving them no obstructions should they need to move quickly. He
was about to ask what was wrong with her until he remembered that
they were a good five or six stories up from street level. If
FancyDancer were uncomfortable just when they weren’t even in the
same room together he figured this had to be much worse.

“What does it feel like? If I’m allowed to
ask.”

“What does what feel… oh,” Dancer said. “Is
it that obvious?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

Dancer blew out a long breath. “Okay, you
know what it feels like when you stretch your arms after you wake
up?”

“Yeah.”

“Think of doing that, but instead of being
stopped by your bones and muscles it just keeps going. It feels
good at first, right, like you’re finally able to break away from
some cramped position? But the farther and farther it goes the more
you remember, ‘Oh yeah, bodies aren’t supposed to do that.’
Discomfort becomes pain. Pain becomes… well, we haven’t let it get
that far recently. The more we stay near each other the better it
feels, but then the harder it becomes for us to separate. You’ve
got to wonder at what point that will finally stop.”

“But you can feel what she’s feeling right
now?”

“She’s nervous. Or at least I think she is.
It might be that I’m the one who’s nervous and she’s feeling it,
and I’m just feeling her feeling me. That happens sometimes.”

Cory tried to imagine what it would be like
to have that kind of connection to anyone. He wasn’t even sure if
he could feel a so-called normal connection with other people. He
couldn’t remember any friends from before except for Gramma, and
she had died and left him alone before his formative years. That
much he was able to remember.

Maybe you don’t need to remember any
connection like that
, Gramma’s voice said.
Maybe making
those connections now would be enough
.

If the Dusters don’t kill us all
tonight
, he thought.

Well, yeah. If
, Gramma agreed.

As the time ticked by and nothing happened
Cory took a moment to study his environment. Even though he’d spent
a large portion of the last year hiding out in the garbage piles
directly below him he had never bothered to come up here and
appreciate the view. He was sure it would have been much nicer had
he been able to see it in the daylight. Then again, maybe not. The
dingy alley below didn’t appear quite so bad with only the
occasional sodium lamp to light it. His current exact position
didn’t give him the best view of the lights of downtown,
considering a large chunk of it was still blocked by the Retlaw as
it continued up a few stories above him. To the east he could at
least see the lights from the Rosalind Apartments. If he strained
his vision looking to the north he could see a couple of landmarks,
the most prominent of which was the darkened shape of a church
steeple a couple miles off. A story or two below him, just beyond
the alley, were the rooftops of many of the downtown buildings
including the top of the tunnel. Somewhere underneath there Fancy
was probably pacing and waiting for someone to come along and try
killing her.

That thought made Cory go back to the night
beside the pizza place, whether he wanted to or not. Somehow this
didn’t seem like it was a close enough situation, and he had to
think about it for several minutes before he realized what was
missing.

“This isn’t going to work,” Cory said. “At
least not without something else.”

“Way to stay positive there, Meateater.
Sorry. I meant Cory.”

“No, it’s not that I’m being negative. It’s
something all the other attacks had that we’re missing.”

“What are you…” She didn’t have to finish the
sentence. He could tell from the “Oh, duh,” look on her face that
she figured it out, too. It was Pig. The Dusters had never attacked
anyone without the victims seeing him first. Maybe he was just
supposed to be there as a distraction. Or maybe he was more than
that. He could very well be how they knew where to attack in the
first place. He could be acting as a beacon.

The problem was that they had no idea how to
get his attention, or rather “its” attention if their theory was
right. Cory wasn’t sure he even wanted to attract Pig at this
point. Setting themselves as bait in a trap for the Dusters had
been a bad enough proposition. To actively try calling the thing
that had kidnapped and tortured them, even going so far as
pretending to be one of them in order to add to the emotional
abuse, wasn’t something Cory thought he could do. And if he was
reading the look on Dancer’s face right, even she had a serious
problem with that.

“So what do we do then?” Cory asked. He
didn’t expect any answer from Dancer, nor did he receive one. In
their haste to do something, anything at all, they hadn’t thought
their plan through enough. Instead of coming for them the Dusters
would be somewhere else out there in the city, murdering either
other vampires or more humans and blaming it on…

Cory didn’t have to turn around from his
perch at the edge of the ramp to know that they suddenly weren’t
alone. He could feel the presence, a heavy weight on his breath as
though something else was using up all the night air and not
leaving any for him. Dancer, too, held her breath for a moment next
to him before she slowly turned around. Cory did the same, certain
they would both see Pig or one of the Dusters behind them.

It wasn’t Pig. It wasn’t a Duster. It was…
something else.

It was wearing a long, dark coat and kept far
from the reach of any of the sodium lights, insuring that they
could only see it as a large shadow standing on the railing at the
farthest end of the ramp. There shouldn’t have been any way it
could balance on that thin strip of metal. Even FancyDancer, with
their level of grace greater than any other vampire Cory had yet
witnessed, wouldn’t have been able to show that level of precision
balance.

Although there was no way of telling from
here whether the figure was male or female it was at least
definitely human, or rather human-shaped. Cory could see subtle
areas beneath its coat that bulged where nothing should have been,
as well as areas like the left shoulder that should have had some
heft to it but didn’t. It clearly had a head, although that too
seemed somehow wrong in a way he couldn’t quite figure just
yet.

Overall it was clear to Cory that the figure
was not human, but neither could he be certain it was a vampire. It
was, well, something else he didn’t have a frame of reference for,
and that was just based on its darkened outline.

He didn’t need to ask its name. There was
only one person or thing it could have been.

“Fruit of the garden grown wild,” it said.
The voice, like everything else about it, didn’t lend itself well
to a specific gender. In fact there was an odd echoing quality to
the sound as though it was not a single voice at all but rather
several all speaking in nearly perfect unison. “We’ve been watching
you grow. And we’ve been watching your gardener.”

Cory looked to Dancer, expecting her to say
something intelligent or thoughtful, anything at all that might
engage the figure in a coherent conversation. But she didn’t speak.
She seemed both enthralled and repulsed at the same time, taking a
step toward it before deciding better and instead stepping
away.

“Screaming,” Dancer whispered. She said it so
softly that Cory would have needed to ask her to say it again, but
he didn’t have to. “Screaming it’s screaming we’re screaming.”

“Dancer?” he asked, but it was obvious that
he wasn’t going to get an understandable answer from her. Her eyes
were unfocused as though in a trance. Cory looked back at the
figure—Vlad the Impaler, Vlad the Mystery—and took his own step
closer. Unlike Dancer he fought any compulsion to step back.

“What do you want?” Cory asked. His voice
surprised him. All night any attempts at assertiveness had come out
timid, but not this time. Possibly that was because he got a very
clear sense from Vlad that it had no intention of doing anything to
him. If anything, even though he could see no facial expressions
and it had no posture cues to give its emotions away, Cory was
certain that it was amused by him.

“The gardener’s weeding techniques are quite
outdated,” Vlad said. “Perhaps we would like to show it new tricks.
Or perhaps we are simply offended by its arrogance. We’re not
entirely sure.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Cory
said.

“No, of course not. The plant upon which the
fruit grows does not comprehend the will of the gardener nor that
of the pests that harry it.”

“None of this is helping,” Cory said. Again
he was shocked that he would dare talk back. This was a creature
that had mercilessly killed a large number of people just within
this city in the last year. He had no idea what else it might do.
Yet it made no move to punish him for any insolence.

“Then let us speak in words that are
completely plain,” Vlad said. It pointed in the direction behind it
at the church steeple. “The gardener’s tools are there, as well as
its fresh batch of seeds.”

Cory didn’t think Vlad knew what “words that
are completely plain” actually meant, but he thought he understood
the metaphor enough. That was where the Dusters were right now,
although he had no idea what they might want with a church at this
time of night.

He turned to Dancer to confirm this, but she
still looked as though she’d been drugged. Cory looked back at
Vlad. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing on purpose,” Vlad said. “She and the
other one have ripened on the vine quicker than other fruit. She
feels that she is ready to be harvested.”

Even if the rest of what it had said sounded
like gobbledygook to him, Cory at least understood that last line
enough to believe there was a threat in it. He remembered the way
Pig had spoken about fruit and ripening. Those who were “ripe” were
taken beyond the door and never returned.

“You stay away from her,” Cory said. Although
he knew it was nothing but his own voice, in his head the words
sounded exactly like they had come from Gramma.

“Oh, we will not be the one to harvest her,”
Vlad said. “The time will come where she will harvest herself.”
Vlad tilted its head as though listening to voices only it could
hear. “We must leave, and you must pay attention. Time grows short
for your friend. The gardener’s face is below.”