AfterAge (14 page)

You betcha.

REVELATION 18:19

For in one hour is she made desolate.

~ * ~

I am a dead woman
.

Deb didn't know why the thought exploded into her mind, but it spread with enough force and certainty to jar her awake. The noises in the old building were soft and familiar; she could almost
feel
the rightness of the huge stone blocks, the insets of metal and glass, windows and doors, still sense their unbreached security She was safe.

Tonight
.

But not . . . when? Tomorrow night? Or the next? Deb forced her breathing to slow as she listened to her life's air swelling and ebbing in the dark like a miniature bellows. Waking prematurely yesterday had been a fluke—she had scared herself with her own silly paranoia. Now there was no reluctance to move and no doubt that she was alone in the Art Institute, and although the cot was good for sleeping when she was exhausted, awake it was narrow and uncomfortable; Deb finally sat up, sliding the Winchester under the cot without hesitation. She found her book of matches and lit the lamp, watching the welcome glow spread through the alcove before scrubbing at her face with her hands and looking at her watch: three o'clock. Three hours to sunrise.

I should be afraid
, Deb thought.
Hell, I
am
afraid. But it won't do any good.

I am a dead woman
.

She inhaled deeply, calmer, vaguely accepting. When? The oil lamp's golden light glimmered softly on the burgundy-colored drapes encircling her small, cozy home. "Not tonight," she said aloud. Her voice should have been frightening in the semi-soundless room; instead she found it reassuring. She combed her fingers absently through her hair and tried to think. Why this sudden premonition? Her life had changed drastically today—perhaps Alex was the answer. As much as she would like to think he was different, maybe in reality he wasn't. . . .

She didn't believe that. Her game of making sure he didn't follow her when they'd parted had been just that—a game. Her intuition insisted he was trustworthy, just as it had made her leery of John last fall. Her reluctance was just a way of dealing with too much too fast; she was already looking forward to seeing him tomorrow.

Tomorrow
. . . .

Her shoulders sagged and she fought the tears suddenly burning her eyes and making a smear of the lamplight around her. Tomorrow would come, but what about tomorrow night? Or the next day?

God, she hated crying, and the flaring pain in her stomach made her want to cry even more. Not because it hurt—she could deal with pain. What really stung was knowing that she no longer needed to go to the library or read up on it.

Her ulcer just didn't matter anymore.

The tears splashing her hands sparkled like drops of honey in the gentle light.

I am a dead woman
.

REVELATION 18:24

And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints,

and of all that were slain upon the earth.

~ * ~

To the human eye, the city under tonight's cloud-hidden quarter moon was a gray haze, downtown a deserted, illusory shadow across the river like a black-and-white film frozen at its darkest moment. Staring over the east railing of the Wells Street Bridge, Anyelet smiled widely. This city wasn't dead at all; she could
feel
the life still pulsating within it. It might seem empty to a puny, light-loving human, yet let that same fool dare to walk its sidewalks—
her
sidewalks. If he or she were lucky, they would be captured and brought to the Mart by one of Anyelet's soldiers. Otherwise. . . .

Her calculating gaze swept the southern side of the Chicago River, following the narrow concrete park along its base and seeing even through the distant darkness the tiny buds sprouting on the tree branches. The fancy stone sidewalks were spotted with granite benches and matching trash bins between trees encircled by metal sunbursts set into the concrete. Two years before, office workers had carried lunches down those steps, ignoring the transients and winos who made the minipark a place of residence in the warmer months. Then the riverside had been unsafe to most citizens at night. Now it was death, and Anyelet's eyes narrowed as she picked out a few moving figures in the blackness down there, starving things that could barely carry their own weight but whose presence forced her soldiers to move in twos and threes away from the Merchandise Mart. Anyelet seemed to be the only one able to travel anywhere alone, which was as it should be. A year ago it had never occurred to her that one vampire might prey on another, so desperate would they become in The Hunger. Before now, she had thought the food would never end, like the queen in the hive, blindly enjoying the fruits of her womb as they catered to her every whim.

But the food
had
run out, and by the time she'd realized what was happening, it had been far, far too late. Chicago, the continent, the
world
, had been filled with her children, and her children's children,
ad infinitum
. In their feeding frenzy, they had doubled each night, conquering this huge city in only slightly more than three weeks. The mathematics had been astounding: Anyelet had reproduced, created a single child, then taken that nativity to the nth power. All those faraway places—California, Hawaii, Asia, Europe, every island and continent in the world—had been victimized as her offspring fanned out, crossing borders and oceans, using boats and those oh-so-wondrous airplanes to take The Hunger to every possible point on this suddenly too-small planet.

And why? She breathed deeply of the night air and gripped the steel railing, listening to the lap of the water as it kissed the supporting walls on each side. Because she had grown
tired
; tired of hiding, tired of being alone and inventing stupid little games so that she could feed without arousing suspicion, tired of forever being the stranger. All those epochs blurred together: here in the twentieth century Anyelet alone knew the real reason Stonehenge had been erected, and while the avenues of her memory were blurred, she could still recall the first night of her solitary existence, her dark and bloody birth upon the Slaughter Stone facing Stonehenge amid a circle of horrified, barbaric priests. After twoscore centuries. Anyelet knew the location of countless undiscovered riches still hidden in the sands of Egypt, and the fates of dozens of civilizations in the steaming tropics of South America. In the youth of man she'd had so many opportunities to feed unnoticed, all those wars and atrocities through which she'd slipped unseen—the Crusades, the American Civil War, the death camps of Germany, Korea, and, of course, Vietnam, with its ingeniously camouflaged prisoners of war. So many secrets, blending like melting wax as the years sped uselessly, boringly by. Because at its most fulfilling, what had her nights been but an endless hunt for the next meal? She wanted fellowship and servants, the sound of voices raised in adulation and respect, the everlasting degree of
power
that belonged to her by the very fact of her dark and immortal being.

Finally Anyelet had risen one cool fall night with a need so great it nearly eclipsed The Hunger, a need to walk where and when she pleased and choose anyone for food or entertainment, the burning, irresistible desire to surround herself with an entourage of immortal companions. Chicago teemed with life, its music and laughter and screams enfolding her in an endless, vivacious bloodscent. At the time her reasoning had been so clear: This was a city of plenty.
Why shouldn't she claim it?

And so she had. There was little forethought, just a smug self-confidence that whomever she created would be hers forever, a multitude of little puppets eternally dancing on her strings. So many centuries had passed in her existence yet
never
had she met another like herself, and the few she'd accidentally created in the dawn of her being had failed to survive, perishing from stupidity or carelessness, leaving as their legacy enough evidence to create the lore and superstition that forced her into perpetual hiding. When at last she'd sunk her fangs into the first of the humans who would help her bring down this city, there'd been no one to guide her, no one from whom she could seek answers or advice. She'd had only a burning rage and strength of will born of millennia of isolation.

As she had in her earlier dream, Anyelet now spread her arms wide, feeling an odd mixture of fulfillment from the man who had pleasured her and unease from the dream's horrifying end. It was regrettably true that she had started the chain reaction that had all but emptied this planet, and her decision had been brash and swift and devastatingly
unstoppable
. She might call her children an army, but in reality her "soldiers" were simply the strongest and most obedient of her creations. Anyelet had once thought mankind was her enemy, but she had been so very wrong. Her true enemy was also her truest and most constant comrade: The Hunger. The Hunger had decimated her world and driven off most of her children, making them skulk into the night like hyenas, disgusting scavengers feeding on rats and whatever else they could find in the sewers, subways, and underground avenues. The ones who remained—Rita, Vic, Gregory, and a few others—were well rewarded, but even they lacked the common goal she'd tried so hard to instill. Cohesiveness was nonexistent while self-serving greed showed itself at every turn. The vampires across the country or the world mattered little to Anyelet, and with each generation her hold became increasingly vague and tenuous, until all that remained—and it would
always
remain—was the inborn sense in every creature Anyelet encountered that she held a power, a
rightness
which could not be questioned. That sense of command would forever exist.

Eventually the outcasts would die off. The rats, diminishing in number, would keep the undead mobile but not strong; they were already tearing at each other to lessen the competition, and each sunrise killed dozens more who had been unsuccessful in the hunt and were too weak to seek shelter. Another six months and most of that garbage would be dead.

The breeze picked up from the north and she lifted her face and flared her nostrils. As Hugh had implied, there were still humans in the city, strong survivors who would make excellent additions to her "farm." With the right conditioning, Stephen, that weak would-be priest, could eventually be persuaded to replace the violent Siebold as the breeder.

The wind again, carrying its scent of weather and lifting her hair. Chicago's hidden cache of food would soon discover that the clouds were bringing more tomorrow than just an early sunset.

In another two days, they would bring snow.

Anyelet grinned, threw back her head, and shrieked joyously at the sky.

REVELATION 6:10

And they cried with a loud voice, saying

"How long, oh Lord, dost Thou not judge and avenge our

blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

~ * ~

"Oh, Father," Jo said unhappily as she stepped outside St. Peter's and gazed up at the still dark sky. "Your will be done. But I sure wish I knew Your reasons sometimes."

She shivered and hugged herself. The temperature was at least twenty degrees lower than last night, with sunrise later because of the heavy, ominous clouds rolling in from the west, and she could smell harsher things coming. Still rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms, Jo headed toward the south branch of the river without bothering to go back for a coat. Her hair was like a blanket anyway, and it wasn't the cold that bothered her but the danger she knew would come with it. Crossing Wacker, she stood at the metal railing on the Adams Street Bridge and looked south. What was happening far beyond the range of her eyesight or imagination? This river led to other parts of the country, warmer climates where perhaps the men and women were not so crippled by nature's cold whims. Did they struggle as hard as the small, pathetic groups here? If so, were they
successful
in those struggles? And who helped them?

I am not alone
, she told herself sternly.
There are others like me in other places, fighting this evil. I am not alone
.

The water rippled like thick ink and she watched it for a few minutes. To her right the shadowed recesses of the train tracks of Union Station stretched along the river until water and retaining wall merged into one indistinguishable blur, hiding the creatures of death that dared the sunrise just enough to scuttle amid the concrete supports and stare up at her. Jo could feel their hungry eyes crawling over her flesh like fire ants, but this morning she felt no compulsion to go to them. She twisted and looked at the buildings lining the north waterfront, gleaming monoliths of steel and glass lightening under the growing glow from the eastern sky, marveling that man could build such a structure when as a child she'd hardly been able to stack blocks five high. Tilting her head, she glimpsed the sleek shape of a falcon overhead, one of the peregrines—or perhaps a new generation—freed in the city years ago to help control the pigeon population. There were still pigeons, though not as many. Lazy, trusting birds, they had been quick and easy food when starvation had begun to run its spasming hand among the vampires. Now the pigeons roosted high atop the skyscrapers with other, more timid species and took their chances among their more natural predators.