Endlessly (12 page)

“Then change me,” she said.

“But what will happen to you?” I wanted
to do what she said. Fuck the Quatre and their fucking rules. If I
knew that my bite would change her into a normal vampire I would do
it in a heartbeat. We could hide, and make a life for ourselves.
But I was afraid of all the things I didn’t know.

“Pack some things,” I said. “I have
someone who can help with your shift. She has all the information
that you need, but it might take a day or two.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Jessica. She’s a witch. A
witch in our world is like a doctor. We go to them to get answers
to our questions. They know a lot, and if they don’t know the
things you need, they’ll find out for you.” I closed my eyes.
Looking at her was distracting.

Her cool lips found mine as she pressed
her body hard against mine. I let out a feral growl. It startled
me. I opened my eyes. It had startled her too, and she stepped back
from me.

My breath was short and my words were
labored. “You are making this very hard for me not to…to...for lack
of better words…I want to…”

Her smile was coy. “Oh, I know what you
want to do. I’ve seen it.” She blushed.

“And I want to do it repeatedly,” I
said. Her cheeks burned scarlet. “Come on. Get showered and
dressed. Pack some clothes. We are heading to my place.”

“Okay,” she said, “on one
condition.”

I hesitated. “What?”

“I didn’t get to see everything last
night. I want to know about you. I don’t want to intrude, but I’ve
always been curious about vampires.”

“Sure,” I finally said.

She smiled at me, and turned to get
ready. I’d never seen anyone so happy to get an invitation into a
vampire’s home.

Chapter 12

ANOTHER LIFE

On Sunday afternoon the car ride back
to my place became a grueling interrogation about my life style. I
decided it would be better to take a different car, one that
wouldn’t be recognized. Ash had me drive.

I watched the road not looking at her
as I replied to her nonstop questions. “No. No stake to the heart.
No holy water or religious artifacts…and as you can see the
sunlight doesn’t hurt me except for my eyes.” I adjusted the
sunglasses she’d given me. “We can eat human food but we don’t gain
anything from it. It just means going to the bathroom. I can go
into anybody’s house without an invitation. I don’t have fangs,
just sharp teeth. I can cross running water. I have some mind
control, I can move faster than the human eye can detect, and my
strength is far greater than a human’s. I see peoples’ auras. I
also have the ability to heal quickly as long as it’s not a head
wound. Once our brain is damaged we are done. I have the same
temperature as a human and my heart still beats.”

I let her ponder all that for a moment,
then I went on: “It takes a certain kind of personality to make it
as a monster. You have to be willing to take a human life without
regret. Basically, you have to have the personality traits of a
sociopath or psychopath…”

“What’s the difference?” she
asked.

“A sociopath acts on impulse; a
psychopath plans.”

She searched my face. “You have a
slight accent. Also, while I saw a lot when I looked into your
mind, your memories seem to fade at a certain point. How old are
you? And where are you from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what
my human name was. I have a theory about it. I think a human brain
can only contain so much memory and new ones push out old ones. Do
you remember your first steps as a child?” I asked her.

She looked at her feet.
“No.”

She paused before asking her next
question. “You can see auras…as a vampire?”

“No. Not all vampires can. I’m the only
vampire I know who’s able to see them. I don’t know if it is an
aura or what, but I see colors around a person or on their skin or
coming out of their bodies and I know what they are.”

“Why just you?”

It was a question that had bothered me
for as long as I could remember.

“I don’t know,” I said. “As for how old
I am, I can remember some bits of things in the past but not
everything. It’s almost like looking back on a dream. It seemed so
vivid while it was happening, but once you wake up you try to grasp
it, and it slips through your memory. I should have documented my
life. It would have been interesting.” I thought of Kale, and his
record keeping. What was he recording at this very moment? I
wondered.

“It’s entirely possible that I was made
by mistake,” I went on. “I remember people being sick. I’ve asked
other vampires about it. Talking about that kind of stuff makes
them nervous. I was told that there was a lot of feeding going on
during the Black Plague. Since people were dropping dead everywhere
vampires gorged on the dying. A vampire’s sense of smell is better
than that of any other creature. We can smell disease. During the
Plague vampires thought of it as a civic duty to put the suffering
out of their misery. My theory is that a vampire fed off of me, but
didn’t finish me off, and I changed.”

I glanced at her. She thought about
what I’d said, then fired another question. “So there’s a virus
transmitted by a bite. Then you change. What happens during the
transformation? How long does it take?”

“I’ve never done one myself and I don’t
remember my own. Generally you have to have the permission from The
Quatre.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a committee of four people that
makes decisions for us supernaturals. I’ve seen one transformation.
It looked like a horrible case of the flu: high fever, sweats, skin
losing all color, hair turning white. It took about a week.” I
braked as we entered the city limits.

“A week.” She thought it over. “And The
Quatre has to give you permission.”

“Not necessarily, but if they decide
that they don’t like your decisions they will do whatever they like
to you, stopping at nothing. They’re supposed to do what is best
for us. The main thing is to keep our secret from humans. The
Quatre makes the rules, and, if we follow them, humans should never
know we’re here.” I took a deep breath. The Quatre made the rules
and doled out the punishments. I reflected on that as I slowed to a
crawl in the narrow streets leading to the store.

“What are the rules?” she
asked.

“We don’t allow humans to know us for
what we really are. Vampires and incarnates can only mate with our
own kind.”

“Vampires can’t mate with incarnates?”
she asked.

“Not according to the rules,” I
replied. “The idea is that incarnates must be protected against the
primal instincts of vampires. It’s assumed that we can’t control
our appetites.” I grinned at her. She lowered her head and blushed.
I went on: “For the incarnates it’s easier to mate with their own
kind. That way they don’t have to hide what they are. Another rule
is that vampires must get permission to change someone, and we
aren’t allowed to change incarnates. It’s the Quatre’s way of
keeping the vampire population under control. If folks started
dropping like flies from blood loss, people would soon catch
on.”

“And what happens if you break the
rules?” she asked, rubbing the tattooed letters on her
fingers.

“It depends on their mood,” I said.
“They might kill you and everyone they suspect of any
involvement…or they might let you go.”

“You said it’s four people. Who are
they?”

“There’s a vampire, a shaman, and two
incarnates.”

She looked relieved. “That doesn’t
sound too bad. What do the two incarnates…what are their…shifts?
That’s what you call them, right? The thing they change
into?”

“One is a werewolf like Jason. The
other is a fairy.”

I pulled into the store’s parking
lot.

“A fairy. That doesn’t sound so
bad.”

I parked, killed the engine, and handed
her the keys. I could tell from her face that she was thinking of
storybook fairies.

“
You don’t understand about
fairies,” I said. “They are not the cute pixies you read about in
children’s books. They are ruthless, deceitful, and power hungry.
They will stop at nothing to get something. They would destroy the
whole world if that is what it took for them to get what they
want.”

I surveyed the area before getting out
of the car. I knew I wouldn’t see any evidence of the Quatre, but
it was best to be cautious. Finally I got out and hurried toward
the store entrance, Ash jogging to keep up. She looked nervous. Was
my paranoia contagious?

As we entered the store Jessica waved
at us to come back to the apartment. She looked frightened, which
scared me all the more. She gripped a thin book, and gestured for
us to take seats at the kitchen counter. Her mind was sealed.
Though she acted cool, I could tell she was terrified.

She slid the book across the counter,
and I picked it up and examined it. It was old, and its pages were
brittle. “What is this?” I asked as I read the gold lettering on
the cover. “Drache,” it read. Somehow I understood the German
word.

Jessica stared at the book, then at me.
“It’s all you need to know about dragons, Verloren. After today you
won’t see me again.”

“Why?” Ash demanded. “What’s going
on?”

“Ash, please don’t try to pry in my
mind. I’ll tell you what I know. Anyone who knows you’re a dragon
will either be killed, or they will betray you.” She turned to me.
“Give me your cell phone, Verloren.”

I dug it out and handed it to her. She
broke it in half on the counter top then threw it into the trash
can.

“They track everyone,” she reminded me.
“Most likely they’re already on their way here. They’ve heard
everything you’ve said. You must understand: Kale and the Quatre
hoped that dragons had become extinct thousands of years ago.
Apparently that is not the case. There is a prophecy that dragons
will return and rule the world.” She was only addressing Ash now.
“You are a dawning of a new age. The Quatre doesn’t know what that
means, and, like most people, they fear what they don’t know. The
Quatre will do anything to keep control, even if that means killing
you and every other dragon they find. They’ve been doing that for
several years. You’re not the first dragon who’s appeared, and you
might not be the last, but they will do everything they can to
destroy you.” She looked at the book I was holding.

“Sara…” I muttered.

“Yes,” said Jessica, “Sara. She will do
anything to get to you, Ashley. You are a rarity. If the Quatre
does not want you killed, she’ll want the essence of you. She’s
sort of like…a collector.”

“We have to leave,” Ash whispered,
“don’t we?”

”Yes,” Jessica answered. “All I can
tell you to do is run. There won’t be any reasoning with them. We
must face the probability that Jason never got back here because
he…they…” Jessica choked back a sob, then clamped her mouth shut,
as she tried to get back her self-control.

Ash sat, stunned.

I took her hands in mine and kissed
them. “I swear with all my life, I will do everything in my power
to protect you,” I said. “I won’t let them harm you.” I stood and
looked at Jessica. “Help her,” I said. “Get some clothes for both
of us. Take whatever we have from the store—hair dye,
disguises…anything that will help us stay undercover. Load it into
her car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I could tell Ash wanted to question me,
but I didn’t give her the opportunity. I went back to the store,
grabbed the cash from the register, then slowed to human speed as I
hurried across the lot to Chris’s store. I opened the door to the
smell of fresh blood, and knew it had already started. I heard a
weak voice.

“Help! Help! Back here!” Chris lay in
pool of blood, his torso shredded. What was left of his intestines
covered him, and spilled onto the floor.

“Fuck! What happened?” I knelt down
beside him. I didn’t want to touch him.

He handed me a folded piece of paper.
He was in shock, but he managed a whisper: “They said you would
come in for supplies. They left this…” He coughed and gripped what
was left of his chest.

I took the blood-spattered paper.
“Who?”

His eyes were huge, and his aura was
fading. “Two guys came in…and attacked me.”

“Chris, I’m so sorry.” Suddenly I
understood why humans got upset when their pets die. I’d grown fond
of Chris, and I’d often wished I could be as carefree and ignorant
as him. I’d never asked to know the things that I knew. I rose to
my feet and put the letter in my pocket. “Chris, you know that you
are dying, right?”

“Yeah,” he rasped, smiling weakly. “And
it really sucks. So just do it and get it over with.” That’s what I
liked about him. He just knew.

I took my gun from my holster and the
silencer from my pocket. “Here I’m using the gift you gave me to
kill you.” I pointed it directly between his eyes. “Good-bye Chris.
I hope we meet again in your next life.” I pulled the trigger. I
heard the muffled sound, then silence. Somewhere in the world an
infant was taking its first breath. The thought brought a brief
smile, then the anger hit.