Death of an Immortal (10 page)

Now it was different, obviously. The average Westerner was no different than any other city dweller––many of them lived in cities. They pulled up to their suburban houses, hit the garage door opener and entered their houses without ever interacting with their neighbors. They went to giant Walmarts and wandered the aisles, not knowing anyone. They interacted over the Internet and avoided each other in person.

When this is all over,
Horsham thought,
I will look at the possibility of moving to the Northwest
. It was rainy and gloomy and dark and moist––everything he needed.

Daylight was breaking by the time they left Portland. Horsham retreated to the dark womb of the curtained back of the motor home. He curled up in bed, dreaming of revenge.

He felt rather than saw the switchover from the Valley to the eastern part of Oregon. He awoke, feeling as though danger was pressing down on him. It was as if the sun was trying to beat down the curtains.

“Where are we?” he shouted to his driver.

“We just hit the summit of the pass, sir. It’s a beautiful day, blue skies, not a cloud in sight.”

Horsham shivered. No vampire would voluntarily travel to such a place. What was Terrill doing? Why was he here?

He couldn’t sleep after that. The sun seemed to be prying through the walls and curtains of his enclosure, as if seeking him out. He moved to the center of the bed and brooded. Damn Terrill for making him do this. Damn Terrill for putting him in danger. The older vampire, who had once been Horsham’s mentor, was breaking all the rules, most of which Terrill himself had developed.

Did he have a death wish? It wouldn’t be the first time a vampire had become careless and foolhardy because he didn’t care anymore. If so, Horsham would see to it that Terrill’s death wish was fulfilled.

A couple of hours later, the motor home slowed down and Horsham heard heavy traffic on both sides.

“We need to find a place to stay,” he shouted to his driver. “To park…”

“I’ve got just the place,” Shepard said.

A few minutes later, they stopped. Horsham went to the side of the motor home that was in the shade and peeked out. There were two other motor homes in a vast expanse of parking lot. In the distance, he saw a huge sign for Walmart.

“They let you park here for free,” Shepard said.

How utterly charming
, Horsham thought.
How nice of Walmart to provide me with a traveling buffet. People who won’t be missed right away. Right there, next door.

In a few days or a week, someone would find a few empty RVs and one RV full of the gore and bones of the missing. Horsham was looking forward to it. It had been ages since he’d lived among the visceral remnants of his meals. He’d been living the sterile life of a rich man for way too long. He began to salivate over the thought of it; his fangs started to extend.

“I’m going to stay here,” Horsham said. “But we need to find a nearby hotel for you, Shepard.”

“That’s not necessary, sir. I know about your… peculiarities.”

“You know? What do you know?”

“I know that you need to avoid daylight. That you need to feed. You can trust me, Mr. Horsham. I can help.”

Horsham had dozens of employees, none of whom he allowed in his proximity for long periods of time. It wasn’t that hard to figure out what Horsham was if they were paying attention. He hired people who didn’t pay attention, people who had the capacity to be blind to what they needed to be blind to. It appeared that Shepard had spent a little too much time with Horsham, had gotten a little too curious.

“I see,” he said calmly. “Still, I’d like my privacy. Come back here and I’ll give you the money for a nice hotel.”

Shepard came into the back, and Horsham could see that despite his bold words, the man was frightened to death, but also determined to get what he could for his forbidden knowledge. He was just inside the curtained back area and was obviously ready to jump back into the light at the first sign of danger.

Horsham handed him a couple of hundred dollars and told him to book two nights.

“Can’t get a very good hotel room for a hundred bucks a night,” Shepard said. “I think if I’m really going to help you, I need to get a good rest, the kind a really nice hotel would give me. Five hundred dollars would be better.”

“I doubt they have five-hundred-dollar motel rooms here,” Horsham said.

“Well, if I save you money, I can keep the rest, right?” Shepard was trying hard to make the extortion seem only reasonable.

Horsham decided to test him. He peeled another hundred dollars off his roll. “Rent a nice car and come back tonight at dusk.”

“I think three hundred dollars more for the car would be better,” his driver said, unable to keep the greed out of his voice.

So that’s going to be the way of it,
Horsham thought. He didn’t mind the expenditure; it was the control the human thought he had that bothered him. He took out $500 and held it out. But this time, he kept it close to his body, and the human was forced to step a couple of more feet into the darkness.

“Do you know why I’m here, in this godforsaken, dried-up part of the country?” Horsham asked.

“No, sir. None of my business.”

“Well, you’ve made it your business, whether you intended to or not. I’m hunting my mentor. A very dangerous… man. He taught me everything I know. You know what he told me?”

Shepard seemed to sense something was wrong and edged back toward the front of the motor home. He swallowed and shook his head.

“Never trust a human.”

The man was quicker than Horsham expected and was opening the curtains as Horsham landed on his back. They both fell into the light. Horsham felt the pain of the sunlight, but even as he burned, he sucked up the blood of his victim and healed. He burned and healed, burned and healed.

Then he dragged the dead man into the back and feasted on the rest of him.

#

“Rule number one,” Terrill said.

They were in Paris, right after the Nazis had marched in. It was a glorious time to be a vampire, death all around them, their own murdering ways completely unnoticed.

Terrill was working out the Rules of Vampire and using Horsham as his sounding board.

“Rule number one,” he repeated. “Never trust a human.”

“You’ll have a hard time with that,” Horsham said. “We’ve gotten accustomed to our human lackeys.”

“That’s exactly why it must be changed,” Terrill insisted. “Humans have too often betrayed us. We must disappear from the world in order to survive the world. Kill any and every human who discovers us.”

“But won’t the humans notice the murders?”

Terrill went on without acknowledging his question, thereby answering it.

“Rule number two. Never leave the remains of a kill, or if you must, disguise the cause of death.

“Rule number three. Never feed where you live.

“Rule number four. Never create a pattern. Kill at random.

“Rule number five. Never kill for the thrill. Feed only when necessary to eat.”

“Good luck with rule number five!” Horsham laughed. “Vampires kill because we like it, and only secondarily to feed.”

Terrill shrugged. “Those vampires who don’t follow the rules will be discovered and destroyed. The fewer foolish vampires, the better for the rest of us.”

“I thought you were trying to avoid our extinction?”

Terrill frowned. “Yes, but we don’t need more vampires, we need smarter vampires.”

He continued. “Rule number six. Never steal in the short term; create wealth for the long term.” Terrill turned to Horsham and smiled. “As you’re fond of saying, ‘Compound interest is a vampire’s best friend.’”

“Yes, but you must have wealth to start with.”

Terrill shrugged. “So we make a one-time exception.”

“What else?” Horsham asked, curious despite himself. Vampires didn’t follow rules; it was one of the things that separated them from humans. They did what they wanted when they wanted. But he had to admit, it was becoming rarer and rarer to come across other vampires. Alarmingly so.

“That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m sure there should be more.”

“No doubt there should be thousands of rules,” Horsham said dryly. “But maybe you should stop there.”

#

And so he had. Horsham, for one, had lived by these rules ever since. And so had Terrill, which was what had made him so difficult to find. Until now.

Chapter 16

Terrill woke with a start, his internal alarm going off at the very moment the sun dropped behind the mountains.

He’d slept fitfully through the day. Some kids had circled the car in the late afternoon, trying to peer inside the darkly tinted windows, curious at the strange vehicle in their neighborhood. He had had a few tense moments, but they’d gone away and he’d dropped back into a feverish sleep.

His eyes seemed glued shut. His mouth was dry and parched. He was shivering, though it was a warm evening and a blanket covered him. It required dredging up a distant memory from when he had been human to diagnose what was wrong with him.

It was as if he was running a fever… which should have been impossible. Above all, he was feeling pain in his chest. He unbuttoned his shirt and looked down at the cross, which had burned another half inch into his skin. The skin around it was red and inflamed.

What was he doing? Was he trying to kill himself? All he knew was that enduring the crucifix felt like the right thing, that he needed to suffer for his redemption. It was a constant reminder of what he’d done, not only to Jamie but to the countless humans he’d killed through the centuries.

#

“I don’t believe in the supernatural,” Terrill said.

“You realize the irony of that, don’t you?” Horsham replied. He was dating a human woman named Mary, who was a saint by day and a sex demon by night.

Terrill had had a long time to contemplate religion, but he hadn’t come to any conclusions. He was completely nonreligious.

“What irony?”

“Well, you say you don’t believe in the supernatural, and yet here we are, vampires! The stuff of legend.”

“But we’re completely natural,” Terrill said, certain that he was right. “We just haven’t been studied yet. We’re as real as the Neanderthals once were. We just haven’t gone extinct.”

“Yet.”

“What?”

“We haven’t gone extinct yet.”

“Maybe,” Terrill conceded. As humans became ever more numerous, vampires were being forced out of the shadows and into the light, where they were being systematically destroyed. With Michael the Maker’s blessing, Terrill had created the six Rules of Vampire for the remaining vampires to live by. They seemed to be working.

“So we’re completely natural, like penguins or dolphins or guinea pigs. Except… why does holy water burn us, why can’t we stand on consecrated ground, and why do we flee the cross?”

That was the flaw in Terrill’s skepticism, all right. Why should the symbols of Christianity affect them so if there was no such thing as God?

“Because some part of us believes the old wives’ tales,” he said, not sounding completely confident in his argument. “Some part of our nature is susceptible to these symbols, whether we understand them or not.”

That was what he told his brethren, but inside, he had his doubts. Once, he’d thrown holy water on a condemned vampire who had no reason to believe it was anything other than just water. It was alarming when the vampire burst into flames and disintegrated in moments.

Terrill often wondered if vampires who were Muslims or Hindus or Jews had their own vulnerabilities, but he’d never found a vampire who had originated in any of those cultures. Vampires seemed to be a European Christian phenomenon.

He also wondered if these weaknesses had existed longer than two thousand years. Michael was the oldest of all vampires, and he was twelve hundred years old. Michael never talked about the past, but he did hint that vampires had always existed.

“Maybe we’re working for the devil,” Horsham said.

He made it sound like a joke, but Terrill realized at that moment that the woman Mary was having a deleterious effect on his old friend.

Horsham was breaking Rule 1: Never trust a human.

Mary was becoming an inconvenience. No, she was becoming a danger.

Terrill had a simple solution for such dangers.

#

Mary. That had been the start of his damnation. Or perhaps, because he’d always been damned but just hadn’t realized it, the beginning of his redemption. Or so he had thought for a long time. He’d tried so hard. He’d suffered physically the only way a vampire could, by refusing to feed for as long as possible. He’d thought he was succeeding. He was beginning to feel confident enough to seek human comfort.

If only Jamie hadn’t woken him like that. If only she hadn’t trusted him.

Terrill had broken half of the rules of his own devising. He’d trusted a human long enough to fall asleep with her. He hadn’t disposed of her remains. He had killed in his own backyard.

He probably deserved to be caught.

He put his fingers to the cross, and they burned. Unlike any other wound, it wouldn’t heal. He was feeling true
enduring
pain for the first time in centuries: pain he couldn’t fix by simply feeding.

He was weak, weaker than he’d ever been. He needed sustenance as soon as possible. His ribs were bruised from the beating at the nightclub, and he suspected his face was black and blue as well. Those were injuries that could and should be healed if he intended to survive.