Night Realm (25 page)

“Ripped his head off?” Chelsea said and drew on her smoke. “
Cool.”

“You sound impressed,” Travis noted.

“It is impressive. The more I hear about this the more I want to become one of you.”

Travis didn’t look so sure. “We’ll see.”

“So what happened next?” Chelsea wanted to know, feeling ripples of excitement course through her body.

“We stayed at the farm house for like a month feeding on animals and trying to figure out what to do with our
new lives. We knew we couldn’t go out in daylight anymore, but in the end we took a chance and drove back to Melbourne. Our car was still at the campsite. It was winter, so there were plenty of hours of darkness. We got to our house about two hours before dawn and quickly blacked out the windows of some rooms with paint and materials, anything we could find. Bit by bit each night we made the home more light proof. We could still access money when we needed it no problem. There was no need to touch our parents’ finances. We each had plenty ourselves; more than we knew what to do with as humans, let alone as vampires.

“About twice a week we would all drive out of the city and go hunting for food. This satisfied everyone for a time, but Michael was changing in attitude and started to really lust after human blood. Both Selena and I were constantly talking him out of attacking people. We didn’t want to draw heat on ourselves and have to forever hide out like vermin in a hole.
In the end he stopped listening to us and went out for his first kill. After he got a taste for human blood, there was no stopping him. He went on a killing spree throughout Melbourne. He wasn’t even careful about it, or choosy about his targets. If he had have done things the right way he may have been able to avoid detection altogether. But he was stupid. He brought so much heat from the police that we ended up fleeing to Adelaide.”

“Did Michael go with you?”

“Yeah. He seemed to learn his lesson after a while and stuck to animal feeding. It took a bit of time to get set up in Adelaide, with an appropriate house and selling the Melbourne one. These things are all quite hard to do when you can’t venture out in daylight. But there are ways; especially if you use humans to do the chores for you.”

“So you had friends who knew what you were?”

He shook his head. “No one knew what we’d become. Anyway, things were quiet there for a long while, and for a few years we lived in peace. But then Michael started getting restless again. He killed a bum in a park one night and got the taste for it once more. He was a bit smarter this time. He chose someone who wouldn’t be missed and hid the body when he was done. He even managed to talk Selena into going hunting with him a few times.”

“So she’s killed people as well?”

“Yes, but only a few, and only ones that wouldn’t be missed. She ended up feeling really guilty about it and stopped doing it. I think deep down she wanted to keep feeding on people. She had a taste for it by then, but she really wanted to try and live a more normal life. Anyway, as far as I know she’s never killed again.

“
Michael started going out to clubs, womanizing like he used to do in his former life as a playboy. One thing led to another. It went from just having sex with girls, to fucking them and then killing them. He started getting careless and again the heat was on. That’s when we moved to Western Australia and lived just outside of Perth. Same story there. We lived quietly for about five years, then Michael started up again.” He looked at Chelsea and placed a cold hand on her shoulder. “That was when we decided to move to Queensland, and it only took Michael a week or two to stuff it up here. He’s already killed at least two people that I know of, and I know the police are on his trail. I doubt they’ll ever catch him, though.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” Chelsea assured him.

“I know you won’t. I trust you, Chelsea. That’s what Selena and I are most worried about; being found out and hunted down because of what we are. I doubt whether the cops in the other states have just forgotten about the killings. They’ll all put it together sooner or later if Michael keeps it up.”

“It’s a wonder the police haven’t caught him by now,” Chelsea said.

Travis shrugged. “Even if they did they wouldn’t be able to hold him. He’s got super strength and he can fly. How are they gonna keep him locked up?

“No, the big danger is exposure; people finding out what we are. Then they’ll just want
us dead. I don’t want it to come to that. That’s one of the reasons I’m not keen to turn you, as much as I’d love to have you with me in that way. We may be eternal as in we don’t die a natural death, or from disease, or most accidents, but there are ways to kill us.”

“Decapitation,” Chelsea said.

“That’s one way, but there are a few others. Anyway, that’s enough talk for now.” He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close to him. “I think it’s time you kissed me again.”

*  *  *

Michael was down in the basement of the house, where he’d set up two camping bunks side by side. On each bunk lay the English backpackers he’d attacked last night. Sometimes it took longer to make the transition from human to vampire, but generally it was around twenty four hours. If they were true to the norm then these two should start to turn sometime tonight. Michael couldn’t wait to have two more vampires to go hunting with. The pair would be totally under his command and he salivated at that thought as well.

Tonight was not going to be a pleasant night for them
, though.

After idly watching the pair for another half an hour, Michael noticed a change in them. H
e leaned over the nearest bunk and listened to Kelly’s breathing. It was labored now, coming in short, ragged breaths. Sweat beaded on her brow. In fact, her entire body was covered in a sheen of perspiration. Although she appeared hot, she was shivering. The start of the turn was often like a fever. The pain would set in soon, followed by the overwhelming sense of loss as human life and spirit fled the body and the eternal living corpse remained. It was the realm of the undead. Once embraced, in Michael’s opinion, there was no better life than that of a vampire. He had embraced it fully. For Selena and Travis it had been a constant struggle that they’d never quite come to terms with. Maybe that would change and they’d eventually come around to his way of thinking.

After all, they were vampires.

Paul felt like he was somehow asleep and awake at the same time
, trapped between two worlds; one of consciousness and one of unconsciousness. He tried to force his eyes open, but no matter how hard he tried, the eyelids wouldn’t budge. It was as if they’d been glued shut.

He couldn’t quite get his breath. The air was rasping in his throat like it was mixed with drops of water. He was panting like a dog. Something was tickling his face all the time, frustrating him, and in his delirium it took his
hazy brain quite a while to figure out what it was. It was sweat, running down his face in rivers.

His body started to tremble and he was suddenly very cold. Paul didn’t know where he was or what was happening to him. Why couldn’t he wake up? Why did he feel like he had a major fever? Was he sick? Did he have malaria or something?
And where was Kelly? Was she with him? He couldn’t sense her presence and his inability to come to his senses was annoying the hell out of him.

Paul heard himself grunt loudly as he tried to force himself to wake up. Now he was hot again, burning up, the sweat leaking from his pores incessantly. He could feel something soggy and wet beneath his body. A mattress
, maybe. It was drenched. Clothing clung to him like plastic wrap. Where was the air conditioning? Was he in the tropics?

Then his arms were wrapping tightly around his own torso as he felt a series of bone-deep chills ripple through his body.
He shuddered some more as he curled up into the fetal position. The sweat dried up momentarily as the cold set in. He felt tears streaming from his closed eyes, but he wasn’t crying.

His body convulsed as if he were receiving electric shock therapy. His hip bounced off the bed, then
all his limbs shot straight out, muscles flexed and rigid. They suddenly relaxed before tensing up all over again.

An eclectic potpourri of emotions flooded through him. Happiness, sadness,
lust, anger, love, hate, vengeance, bitterness, warmth, emptiness, compassion, jealousy, outrage, calmness. He couldn’t keep up with them and had no idea what he was feeling in the end, so he just went with the flow, still drifting in and out of consciousness.

And then the pain struck.

Paul felt like he’d just been bowled over by a train. Every muscle in his body burned with a searing fire. It felt like his ligaments were all being stretched beyond breaking point. His muscles were tense and loose at the same time. It didn’t make any sense at all. Then the joint pain set in. He had the semi-conscious sensation of being over a hundred years old. His joints felt riddled with arthritis of the most acute nature. He tried to straighten his legs, then tried to bend them at the knees. Nothing moved. It was like the joints had been fused.

His heart pounded in his chest, slamming against the ribcage. A thousand pulses beat through
out his body. Once again his breathing was shallow and ragged. He just couldn’t seem to draw a decent breath. The fever seemed to have passed, but the pain hadn’t. It wasn’t as bad as when the first wave hit, but tension and agonizing cramps still racked his body periodically.

Now he was overcome with the
devastating sense of loss. Had someone just died? He felt grief-stricken, an emotion he’d never really experienced in life before; especially not to this extent. Paul couldn’t shake it, it was all-consuming.

The realization struck him then. It was suddenly so very clear. Someone else hadn’t died. It was
he
that was dying.

“Fuck!” he managed to say through clenched teeth and a constricted throat.

Paul tried to fight the sensation of life fleeing from his stricken body. He was rapidly losing the battle. His human spirit was being sucked from his mind along with his mortality. He was utterly powerless to stop it. It was the way it was meant to be and there was no denying fate and the claws of death.

His periods of semi-consciousness were becoming less frequent as time went by. He was being drawn into a deep black hole, a bottomless void.

Is this what death felt like? he wondered.

Consciousness was fading fast now, his mind was drifting, floating through that dark cloud of nothingness. Deeper and deeper and deeper.
..

Suddenly he was face to face with the most grotesque being he’d ever witnessed. Its head was bloated and seemed to be covered in giant-sized pimples and warts. Some oozed bright yellow pus. There was a slit of a mouth in the globulous face. That mouth opened and the forked tongue of a snake darted out. It slithered all over Paul’s face and he felt himself scream, but no sound came out. He was terrified and tried to cry out again. The tongue retreated back into the mouth. The lips now curled into a hideous smile. Once again the mouth opened, wider and wider. Paul felt like he was being sucked towards that gaping mouth until his entire head was inside. He waited for it to bite his head clean off.

But then it was gone and he was floating through white space. There was nothing else around him, just stark white light. Even when he closed his eyes the light was just as bright. Paul could feel himself spinning though the void, totally weightless. Gradually the white gave way to shades of grey. The grey became darker and darker until everything was black once more.

His feet suddenly hit solid ground and he found himself standing all alone in a forest at night. Moonlight filtered down through the trees, casting the area in spectral, ghostly shadows. The tree branches moved as if alive and he could have sworn he saw the trunks closing in on him. He took a few steps forward and the forest opened up into a moonlit clearing. It was like he was standing under a spotlight in the
clearing’s centre. All around the edges was dark forest. Pairs of red eyes peered out at him. There were dozens of them, all watching him, sizing him up as if waiting for their moment to strike.

Paul found himself frozen to the spot. He could no longer take a step, nor move a limb or twitch a muscle. It was like he’d been paralyzed from the neck down. The only part of him that had any mobility at all was his head. He twisted it left and right, watching the eyes watching him.
Those eyes started to grow bigger as whatever lurked in the forest starting merging all as one toward the clearing.

Paul held his breath
. He was still unable to move, though he was desperate to turn and run. But he was powerless. All he could do was stand there, rooted to the spot and await whatever fate had in store for him.

They crept insidiously into the clearing, some walking tall with arrogance, others stooped and moving with an awkward gate. One looked like a zombie, its limbs bent at bizarre angles, the rotting flesh falling off its body with every labored step. Another smiled a wicked smile, its teeth bared, two long fangs protruding from the upper jaw. Paul swore he could see blood dripping from those fangs.