Death of an Immortal (12 page)

“Come back in the house. We’ll check in the morning.”

Terrill got to his feet, painfully. He needed to feed, but even more importantly, he had to get out of this garage before dawn, which he sensed was only an hour and a few minutes away. He scanned the cluttered junk with his night vision, his gaze landing on a curled-up tarp, stiffened by dried paint. He pulled it off the table and shook the dust off it. It would have to serve.

He left through the same the opening he had entered by. It had been at least eight hours since the search party had passed by. He started climbing up the hillside, looking for somewhere to hide. It was covered with bare rocks and short juniper trees, but on the other side there was a vacant lot, which connected at one corner with another.

Terrill made his way farther and farther away from the density of houses, his vision picking up the slightest variations of darkness and light. He was in a subdivision that bordered undeveloped land. He could make out some taller trees on the horizon. It would be close, but he thought he could make it there before sunrise.

When he finally limped up to them, he discovered that the trees weren’t as tall or dense as he’d hoped. There was a small overhang in the nearby rocks with a large ponderosa leaning against it. He squeezed in between the tree and the cliff. It wouldn’t be enough shade, he knew. He threw the tarp over himself and waited.

As the sun rose and the light finally hit Terrill’s hiding spot, he realized that the tarp had tiny holes all over its surface. No matter how he positioned himself, at least one of the holes let in light that hit an exposed part of his skin. He tried covering the holes with twigs and leaves, but his efforts seemed to only widen the tears. Finally, he managed to contort his body in such a way that his skin was protected.

He’d been running for decades, always staying well ahead of Horsham’s hunt. But trying to help Sylvie was probably going to be the end of him.

Appropriate that a saintly woman would be the reason he ended his exile, because it had been just such a woman who had begun it.

#

“Don’t marry him,” Terrill said.

Mary was in her wedding dress. Horsham had been shooed away, the groom denied the vision of his bride for now: tradition held that if he saw her in her wedding dress before the ceremony, it would bring bad luck. Terrill had escaped unseen from the rest of the wedding party.

“Oh? Should I marry you instead?” she asked.

He flushed. He’d been attracted to her from the first time he saw her, but he’d never said a word. He’d always watched her from the corner of his eye as she and Horsham walked hand in hand. He was envious, but he admitted it only to himself.

“That’s not why I’m saying it,” he said. “He is vampire and you are human. You believe in God; he is godless, soulless.”

“I don’t believe that,” Mary said, turning toward him. She was tall, nearly as tall as he was, thin and raven-haired. With an oval face, a warm olive complexion, and dark brown eyes, she looked as if there was a Moor somewhere in her Spanish heritage. She was Catholic, and as devout as any human Terrill had ever met. “You have souls, you struggle with right and wrong, just as we humans do,” she continued.

“You’re wrong,” Terrill said. But he wondered if that was true. Why did he care? Was it for her sake, or Horsham’s? Or his own? What meaning did right and wrong have for a vampire? What did it matter, anyway?

And yet, if it didn’t matter, why was he talking to her? Why didn’t he just kill her now and be done with it? It would save Horsham the trouble later, when he got tired of her.

So he told himself. But he simply stared at her as she walked toward him.
Such grace and beauty,
he thought. He’d been attracted to humans before, but always for carnal reasons, for sex or for food. Never had he hungered for their minds or their souls.

Mary stood very close to him, and lifted her long, slender hand and caressed his cheek. “You and Horsham know you have done evil, but God will forgive you if you but surrender to Him,” she said softly.

Terrill turned away before he gave in to the temptation to take her in his arms, lift her up and carry her to his bed. He wanted her, in every way. His fangs extended. Once he started feeding, he would not be able to stop. No vampire could. Did she understand what danger she was flirting with here?

Someday Horsham would give in to his desire; he would consume her, and she would be gone.

Terrill couldn’t bear that thought.

“I do not need your God,” he said. “I have everlasting life just the way I am.”

“By killing others,” she said. “Your soul is damned, but you do have a soul. It can still be redeemed. It is never too late, if you turn away from sin.”

“No… I have done too much evil. It is impossible.”

Her eyes turned soft. Again she approached him, and again she tempted him. This time he didn’t resist. He kissed her and pressed his body to hers.

“I will save you both,” she whispered in his ear.

They made love that night, and Terrill discovered, to his amazement, that she was a virgin. He’d assumed that she and Horsham had consummated their love. Instead, she had given herself to him.

She wanted to save him. She already was well on the way to changing Horsham. But she was greedy in her desire to convert them both.

As he climaxed, he knew what he had to do. He had to save her from certain destruction, and for that, he needed to kill her.

Terrill sank his fangs into her neck. She let out a whimper.

“No!” she said pleadingly. “Not this way.”

It was too late. He’d begun feeding. He drained more and more of her blood, and it tasted sweeter than any blood he’d ever tasted.

“Terrill,” she whispered. “I must be your last. You must never kill again. You must turn to God.”

And then she was still, and he was crying. A vampire who cried. Such a thing had never happened before. Guilt washed through him. What had he done?

She will come back
, he told himself. And when she did, she would see how wonderful it was to be a vampire. She would be one of them, and they would live forever.

He was sure of it.

Chapter 19

Terrill awoke beneath the musty tarp, his festering body covered by insects. Half of the bugs were dead from trying to feed on him; the other half were eating the bugs that had already died. Vampires were not part of the natural food cycle.

He was in intense pain, which was a rare sensation for him. The solution was meat, but he was too weak to hunt. He threw the tarp aside and shook himself free of insects, living or desiccated. He had bug bites all over him, none of them healed.

It showed what bad shape he was in. He needed sustenance soon or he would begin to rot like a long-dead corpse.

Still, he waited until well past midnight before he left his hideout. He had a few hundred dollars in his pocket, enough to buy food, but first he wanted to make sure he had more money in hand. He followed his path back through the vacant lots, having noticed a small neighborhood commercial center with a couple of banks during last night’s journey to his hiding place.

He was in luck. The first ATM he tried would take his brand of card. There was no one in sight, not even any cars passing on the major road nearby. It was cold and dark and everyone was home, asleep.

The machine slurped up the card and he tapped in his PIN. The screen blinked for a few moments and then spit the card back out. He tried again––and again. On the fourth attempt, the machine kept the card. “Illegal transaction,” the screen read.

A pickup drove by, then circled back around. It roared up next to Terrill and screeched to a stop. Two young men wearing scarves over their faces jumped out and approached him. There was nowhere to run. Once upon a time, these would have been the perfect victims; the kind of men society wouldn’t miss and wouldn’t search for. But Terrill wasn’t looking for victims anymore.

“What’re you doing, old man?” jeered one of them. “You trying to tell me a bum like you has money in the bank?”

Old man? Is that how I appear?
Terrill wondered. He looked down at himself. His once-fine clothes were filthy and stained. His hands looked dried up. He was shaking.

“It took my card,” he mumbled.

The one who had spoken got closer and wrinkled his nose at Terrill’s smell. “You have to have the PIN, dumbshit.” He turned to the other man. “Search his pockets.”

“Come on, man!” the second one protested. “The guy is filthy. And what’s the point? He’s a homeless dude!”

“You’d be surprised, Barry. Some of these old bums have rolls of cash like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh, good. Tell him my name. That’s just great.” Despite his grousing, Barry walked over and gingerly began searching Terrill’s pockets. The blood flowing through the veins of his neck was only inches away from Terrill. Despite himself, his fangs began to extend.

“Jesus. The guy is drooling,” Barry said, disgusted. “Next time we roll a bum, you do the honors. Wait… I think I got something.” He withdrew three crisp hundred-dollar bills from the inner pocket of Terrill’s suit jacket. “I’ll be damned––look at this!”

“Told you!” said the first guy. Then he turned to Terrill. “Listen, old man. Forget about us. Forget about Barry––uh, his real name is… Poindexter. Got that? His name is Poindexter.”

“Yeah, John, that really ought to work,” Barry said, but he was too excited by the three hundred dollars to be too peeved.

“He called me Murgatroyd,” the first guy said, laughing. “That’s my real name! Let’s go, Poindexter, you fuckin’ idiot!”

They jumped into the truck and roared away, swerving onto the street with a squeal of tires.

#

Terrill sank against the wall, unable to stay on his feet. He’d been sure the men were going to attack him.

Once, he would have torn Poindexter and Murgatroyd limb from limb, or at the very least, he would have easily evaded them. But now, he had no strength, no quickness in him. More importantly, he had no desire to kill men over mere money.

The machine had eaten his card. It was clear that Horsham had found him; no one else could have or would have frozen his bank accounts. The check to Sylvie had probably been all the opening Horsham had needed. It was only a matter of time before Terrill’s nemesis tracked him down.

Why did he keep trying? Why continue?

He remembered Mary’s forgiveness. Could he just give up and fall into the embrace of that kindness?

No, he wasn’t done, he sensed. He still had to help Sylvie; he still had to honor Jamie’s memory.
Jamie.
All the long years he’d denied himself, gone in a moment of weakness. He wouldn’t simply quit now.

Terrill staggered to his feet.

He had stumbled only a few blocks before he saw a very fat house cat cross in front of him. He called out to it in a soft voice. It turned and stared at him, its eyes glowing in the darkness. It let him get within a few feet before it sprang away, running as if a pack of dogs was after it.

How pathetic he’d become, to resort to hunting pets and even then to fail.

A small Chinese restaurant was the last of the commercial buildings on his way out of the neighborhood. He smelled the discarded meat and vegetables in the Dumpster from half a block away. Before he realized it, he had thrown open the lid and was leaning in, grabbing handfuls of the mushy food. Some of it was meat; much of it was vegetables, which his body would reject.

Terrill walked away, his stomach full and yet somehow unsatisfied. He stumbled back to his hideaway and crawled under the tarp for the little warmth it provided. Ten minutes later, he was on his knees in the soft volcanic dust, throwing his guts up. Nothing stayed down, not the vegetable matter, not the moldy noodles, not even the spoiled meat. His body could retain nothing.

He needed blood or nothing at all.

Too miserable, too weak to do anything else, Terrill crawled back under the tarp. Never before had he hidden during the night. The darkness was his friend and ally, and he was master of it.

It wasn’t too late, even now. He could still stalk an unsuspecting human, catch them by surprise, drain them before they could begin to resist––and it would almost immediately lend him strength, which would give him more power over his victim, and the next, and the next, until he was healed.

Terrill had been injured before, had been homeless and friendless before, but he’d never been so weak, and had never been without recourse to blood.

The only thing denying him escape from his plight was himself, and his promise to Mary and Jamie.

Something was biting his thigh. He reached down into his pants and pulled out a big, black beetle.

He brought it to his mouth and retched, unable to consume it. He tried a second time, and again he retched. Finally, he swallowed the insect whole, feeling its legs and antennae in his throat as it went down. He expected to throw up again, but to his surprise, it stayed down.

It was live flesh, after all. He started hungrily eating more of the wriggling insects, and in return––as if in compensation for his disgusting act––his bite marks began to heal. He put his hand to his face and found that the open wound over his eyes had closed.

If Horsham could see him now, he’d have his revenge. Reduced to eating bugs to survive, hiding under a canvas tarp, less than a man or a vampire. Stripped down to his essential carnivorous nature.

What would Mary think of his “soul” now? Would she recoil in disgust?

And yet, he thought maybe she’d smile at him. Mary would understand, as would Jamie. He had been brought so low because he had refused to give in to his vampire instincts.