Burned, p.15
Burned, page 15
He didn’t.
None of them did.
I dragged them out kicking and screaming under the stars to the rooftop so they could be free. The moon shone brightly for them, but they failed me. Still, I wasn’t angry. They cried and mewled when I drained them. They turned away from the blood when I offered them mine, tried not to drink it, but I forced them to be saved. I took their little bodies, dragging them behind me to Sweet Heart Row, and hid them in the sewer access so they’d be safe from the sun. Popsie wanted to run away, but no matter where he ran, I was in front of him with Petey, Darla, and Spanky.
“I don’t understand what I did differently,” I shouted at Popsie. “If you’re so fucking old, explain it to me!”
He withered before me. “I can’t. You’re insane. You—”
“Then make me feel better.” I leaned in close. We were back in the desert. “Make me feel better, or you can see it again and again until we both understand why they didn’t turn out like me.”
I took us to another night. Popsie and I watched as the me from only a few years ago wandered Sweet Heart Row, trying to catch a glimpse of my children. We watched the remembrance of me torturing the vampires I discovered until I found one who knew what had happened.
“The Big Guy killed them. The Eric guy. Him and that car of his.”
The other me tore the vampire into little pieces while I stared at Popsie, watching his expression. He’d considered himself scary. He’d considered himself better than me, superior. Now he knew. He was never going to make it out of my head unless I let him go.
“I can cure you,” Popsie whispered. “I can undo the chupacabra infection. We can work together. Population Control and the Courtneys. I—”
I let him go.
He fell backward out of my head, and I stared across the room at him. Evelyn was surround by chupacabras, but they withdrew at a gesture from Popsie. “No. No. We have an accord. They are the new masters of Void City.” The chupacabra transformed, some becoming leprous humans in their tatty robes and others mangy dogs scampering back to their warm doggie beds. So that’s how that works, I thought. Sneaky. Sneaky.
“Drink.” Popsie held out his wrist. “The blood will taste foul, but I’m the Prime Contagion. My blood can cure you.”
I drank and grinned. I hadn’t even needed to bother Dad.
I’m a good sheriff. Look how scared my citizens are!
18
ERIC
WAKEY-WAKEY
At dawn, my eyes snapped open. If I’d been a rooster, I would have crowed. Farmers would have shouted at me to shut the hell up, which would’ve done as much good as the voices of those around me. Words filled my ears, but they had no meaning. Crimson tinted my sight, lending reality an ink wash of blood. Heartbeats throbbed about me, blood coursing through veins so loudly that it hurt all the way to my hair. Sounds I knew well. Figures leaned over me, their features obscured by my need; a desire for blood screamed in my mind, blocking out other thoughts with near-complete success.
What the hell? I don’t usually let the hunger get this bad.
A vampire’s thirst is never weak, but this was different. It was the thirst that comes on after several nights of not feeding: a killing thirst. The kind where one drop of blood can send me over the edge and I’ll kill anybody . . . well, almost anybody. I heard Marilyn’s heartbeat and howled. I didn’t want her blood, have never had the slightest desire to drink from her, not even when I first rose. But there were other things I did want to do, and I didn’t have permission to do them.
Hands touched me, bringing with them the scent of jungle cats and sacred waters. Talbot. Blood filled my mouth, cold, from a bag. It was human blood, but my body didn’t want it cold; it wanted fresh blood. Strong blood. The blood in my mouth was straight human, and I swallowed, but my body rejected it, violent heaves sending it all back up, like the first time I tried to drink animal blood. I don’t know why animal blood doesn’t work for me, but it never has. Human blood, though—unless some idiot had microwaved it—had always done the job, warm or cold.
“Not working,” I panted.
Other voices were trying to make themselves heard, but they made no sense, as if the part of my brain that spent time decoding such things didn’t consider that function important until after I fed. Out. My wings flapped involuntarily, sending two sources of blood with heartbeats against the wall, my first sign that I’d gone über vamp as I woke. I wanted—no—needed out of the room to hunt, needed to hunt far away from the people I knew. I couldn’t remember all their names, but I could feel them near me, willing to be drunk from, marked with my blood and my essence, but not perhaps as deeply as I feared I would drink.
Why does all the really fucked-up shit keep happening to me?
“At least you still have a body,” said a weak female voice from nearby. The soul of Suzie Hu, caught in a state of undress from being eaten on my vampiric wedding night, sat on the ground next to me, rocking back and forth as she hugged her knees. No, not next to me. Her form intermingled with the über vamp’s, her rear end overlapping with my taloned foot. At least the über vamp was wearing pants.
The inner part of me that senses prey assessed her and, discounting her as a source of blood or a potential threat, howled again. I felt Talbot’s claws sink into my skin, and he yowled, releasing me. Singed cat filled my nostrils. For the second time ever, the nature of the über vamp overwhelmed Talbot’s holy blood, burning him where his claws normally burned the undead or demonic creatures of the world. Beneath my talons, something trembled, not the ground, not even a physical thing, an undercurrent of magic, the turning of the world. At the edge of perception, I sensed Fang, not heading for me but coiled steel, ready to pounce if I summoned him.
Next to him, distant but not far removed, I felt my thralls, my army of little helpers. The über vamp howled one long note, and they all responded, some nearby . . . mine for years . . . familiar, others new and yet in some ways older, but all answering my call with one of their own. Farther still, beneath the wave of contact, I sensed animals gathering to act. A single thought could call down a plague of rats, a horde of bats, and other creatures. Above it all, I felt my offspring in their various states of wakefulness or slumber. All of them said “Master” except one:
I love you, Dad. Greta rolled over in her sleep and smiled. I took care of the chupacabra and Mr. Scaly Pants.
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was proud of her all the same. Good girl, I sent.
My oldest, Lisa, squirmed in her sleep, long blond hair cascading over her breasts. She’d fallen asleep with her jeans on, as usual. She was staying as Lady Gabriella’s guest out in Sable Oaks. This close, my presence forced her awake. “Master?” It was a question.
Not yet, I sent.
She waved a hand in the darkness, and a human, not the one I’d sensed a few years ago, a new one—a girl—began playing the cello. Lisa drifted back into death’s temporary embrace.
Not in the same house but in the same neighborhood, Nancy, my second offspring, slept in a coffin with dirt in the bottom, the interior lit with black lightbulbs. She’d always been superstitious. Nancy wore a red silk nightie, her supple chestnut-colored skin standing out in sensuous contrast, as it always seemed to do. We shared the same exchange I’d shared with Lisa, and she hit play on her iPod, sounds of a podcast starting up. Drunken Roundtable scrolled past before the backlight winked out. The host, Kate, sounded like she might be a fun person to know.
Irene twitched in her sleep. Of the first three girlfriends I’d turned into monsters, she was physically the closest, safely ensconced in the uppermost suite of the Void City Hilton. Her eyes snapped open, closed, then open again. In my mind’s eye, she slept naked with two anemic or soon to be anemic young human men sharing the bed to keep her warm. “Master?” she asked, anger flashing across her face, replaced quickly by fear, then neutrality.
Not yet, I assured her.
She bit the bicep of the sleeping man on her right, playfully but penetrating, and fell asleep once more as the human yelped in pain and surprise. Being bitten doesn’t feel good.
“Master?” Tabitha woke fully, grimacing against the word. “Fuck off!” she said, rolling out of bed in her apartment. “I’m tired of your shit.” She faded from view, still angry. She wasn’t in on The Plan.
I can’t count the times I’ve stood on the edge of, well, not the edge of becoming a monster, because I am one, but on the edge of losing who I am to the monster I’ve become. Giving in, letting myself . . . A quote came to mind, one I hadn’t thought about in years, and then Phillip, or the apparition of Lord Phillip, coalesced next to me, a wry expression on his face as he gave voice to the quote: “‘Be sober, be vigilant.’” He said it mockingly, phrasing it as a question. “‘Because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’” He laughed. “You aren’t the devil, my boy.”
“Then you haven’t heard ‘Devil Inside’ by INXS.” I thought I said it, but I didn’t. The über vamp was quiet. On the precipice of power, my form was frozen, my might summoned. I could use it or not. Part of me wanted to, but not the part with The Plan. The hungry part that didn’t care.
Phil’s form quivered as the über vamp roared again. It wanted to rage, like some werewolf without an Alpha to rein it in come full moon. Heartbeats retreated from me, all except for Marilyn’s. I couldn’t see her, but I didn’t have to see her to know her. A succubus made that mistake once in El Segundo, back when I first met Talbot. She took Marilyn’s shape, trying to seduce me. I didn’t even notice the resemblance. Like I said, I always know Marilyn.
And she knows me.
“Looks like she’s sending the children to bed, hoss.” Roger bloomed into being at my back. “When you feed, she’ll really want it. You won’t have to try any poetry or flower nonsense. Just take her.” Roger cut his eyes to Phillip, and the fat little bastard gave the barest of nods. “Try her ass,” Roger continued. “I did. She makes the weirdest little faces.”
Roger wanted to make me angry. I don’t know why. It worked, though. My sense of connection snapped off like a light, and all my attention rested on the oily little man who’d been my best friend—or played the part.
My hand closed around Phillip’s neck, and he felt solid to my touch. He choked, gargling as I broke his neck, but I couldn’t kill him. Not now. Phillip laughed as if that were all he’d wanted to determine. Roger flailed at my forearm, but his hands passed right through me. I could touch him, but he couldn’t touch me.
“Joke,” he choked. “It was a joke.”
I sank my fangs into his arm, but those veins held nothing for me, nothing I could drink.
“What happened to you?” he asked as I pummeled him with my free fist. “Why don’t you just digest our souls? Why keep us like this?” His eyes widened as he reached the same conclusion Phil had reached moments before. “You can’t.”
I opened my mouth to answer and felt soft skin at my lips. I forced my mouth wide to avoid the bite, but then Marilyn pressed her flesh against my fangs, literally impaling herself on them. Her blood was in my mouth, and all other thoughts fell away.
Blood doesn’t have much of a taste—I’ve described it as sucking on a copper penny—but this wasn’t about taste. It was about longing and proximity, about physical contact and warmth and the woman I love. Memories flooded back to me on a tide of sense memory as she wrapped her arms around me and her blood drove the red from my vision and filled in the gaps, draping veins in flesh once more, lending meaning to words that had been meaningless noise.
“I’ve got you, Eric,” she said.
I collapsed to my knees, shrinking back to human size, but there was no pain or discomfort. For the first time in a long while, I felt at home in my own skin. This was the Marilyn who’d held me when I came back from World War II, who’d held me when I was drunk on both alcohol and the horrors of war, who’d held me but stopped me from going too far that night, and the Marilyn whom I didn’t stop from going too far the next night in Fang’s backseat, before I was an undead monster.
It was the same Marilyn who’d disagreed with my decision to reenlist for Korea and who’d talked me into changing careers after that war, convinced me to do something good or try it. If we hadn’t lived in Void City, I think she would have fixed me, and I would have died an old man after church one Sunday. Maybe I would have tried preaching again eventually. But in Void City those things don’t work out. Neither one of us had any idea vampires were real back then and that the cops, even the good ones or the ones who were trying to be good, all worked for Lord Phillip, whether of their own free will or with a little magical coercion to ensure acquiescence and memory adjustment to avoid any troublesome issues of conscience. Some might call it destiny, but it wasn’t. It was just bad luck.
Until my Plan, it had been decades since I’d thought about my time as Captain Courtney of the VCPD. It had been Halloween, when Magbidion shot a mage with my service revolver, that had brought it back to mind. Until things started coming back to me recently, I didn’t have many memories of my time as a cop at all. In this town, I guess, more than anything, that’s a sign that I was an honest cop. I’ve always been honest.
I was about to be honest again, but in a very bad way. It was part of The Plan, but I’d been having trouble managing it, because I can’t fool Marilyn. It had to happen naturally. She had to give me a reason first, any reason.
I pulled away from her and realized we were already on the bed, my shirt was off, my belt undone, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, the pair of jeans I’d come back wearing were old-school button-flys. My hands cupped her breasts, one over the bra, the other underneath. Our mouths were rimmed with Marilyn’s blood, like strawberry jam on children’s faces. She undid the first button and I stopped her, calling myself an idiot the entire time. I could have had her again, but I didn’t want an easy tumble with my girl. Something she and I could both question. Even if that meant she was never mine again. When we were together, at the end of The Plan, it would not be like this.
“You stupid jackass.” Marilyn laughed. “After all this time, I finally—”
I rolled off the bed, buckling my belt. “You’re fired.”
“Ha!” Marilyn let loose one of her trademark braying laughs. “Okay, let me hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Whatever this is.” The line between angry and amused with Marilyn is like oil on water. You can see them both together, but the only way to separate them is to burn off the film and see which one there’s more of. Her shirt was going back on, too. Wounds at her neck, thigh, and wrists where I had apparently fed sealed as I watched. True immortals heal with impressive alacrity. Marilyn was no exception.
“I’m not sleeping with you like this.” I wiped at the blood on my lips and held it out, tacky on my fingertips. “Not in some vamp feeding-frenzy afterglow.”
“But you would have screwed my brains out if the vampire hunters hadn’t interrupted us yesterday at the bowling alley?”
As her clothes went on, it got easier.
“I told you and everyone else to let me go so I could fly off and feed somewhere.”
“You would have rather murdered some stranger than drink my blood?” She gestured wildly with her hands. “That doesn’t even make sense!”
“I don’t drink from you, Marilyn. It’s a rule.”
“Eric.” She slapped her sides. “I don’t believe this. I really don’t. I’m a true immortal. I was the obvious choice. You couldn’t kill me, and I can regenerate blood faster than your most talented thrall. Even if you’d torn me in half, I’d have been fine in ten minutes. Less, even. It’s the least—” She caught herself, but it was too late.
“The least you could do?” I dug around in my pants for my wallet and found it under the edge of the bed.
“Eric.” She wouldn’t hold her hands out to me, like Tabitha might have; nor would she put a hand on my shoulder and try to calm me down, like Nancy. “You know what I meant.” Marilyn’s hands were on her hips.
“Yeah.” I fumbled for an envelope inside the wallet and unfolded it. “Yeah, I do. You think you owe me.”
“You brought me back from the dead, Eric. Rescued me from hell and—”
“And you don’t owe me shit!” My voice was hard-edged and sharp, like I wanted it to be. “I won’t take a pity fuck, M. Maybe I should. Maybe that’s the best I can expect after all that’s happened. And maybe that doesn’t make any sense.” The envelope had Marilyn’s name printed on it in my handwriting. “But I’m good at not making sense. It’s my superpower.” I handed her the envelope.
“What’s this?” She tore it open. “A Dear John letter? You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s a check for two million, four hundred sixty-nine thousand, nine hundred forty-two dollars and sixty-three cents.” The note line on the check read “back salary.”
She stared at the check and then at me. “What is this?”
“Magbidion and Beatrice helped me pull the numbers based on the files you had in your old apartment before you died.” I looked at her feet, not able to meet her gaze. “It should be right. According to the records, Roger never paid you, so this is what you’re owed, plus six months of termination pay.”
“Explain it to me slowly, Eric.” The set of her mouth made it clear that I’d gone past any thin veneer of amusement. She was angry. “Pretend you’re trying to explain it to some really dumb animal, like . . . I don’t know . . . a man.”
“You need time,” I said. “Whether you know it or not. You do. If we get together again now, after this, it will never work. If you feel like you owe me because I got you out of hell or if, I don’t know, if you feel responsible for the stuff I’m having to do to pay that off.” Our eyes met, but it was her turn to look away. I could see what she saw. She saw me strangling Father Ike in her name, and it was a wall between us. It needn’t have been, but she didn’t know that. “You didn’t get to lead the rest of your life, Marilyn. I ate it up with my bullshit, and then Roger stole what was left. You used to want to go to college. Business or something.
