Blood Hunt (2 page)

The cigarettes, the booze, the sex … nothing fazed her, hurt her, made her sick. Tori had not so much as come down with a cold since her return to Ohio. She had slept unprotected with more than three dozen men without becoming pregnant or catching any sort of disease. Sometimes she felt like a superhero. Other times she wondered what the point was. She could not be too overt with her abilities; to do so invited all sorts of unwanted questions. She could drink and smoke and fuck without repercussion, yes, but she spent most of her time trying to hide the gifts that the blood had given her.

This is how Clark Kent feels
, she thought as she made her way back to the bedroom.
All that time spent pretending
not
to be Superman. Fantastic.

She was pulling on clothing, nearly ready to leave, when the voice came without warning into her head, overwhelming her thoughts in a rush like a tsunami, the words strung together and incomprehensible, ranting in a nonsense language.

SasemapestrovahPestrovahNankefalsonsaNanaguivesonsa.

Tori stumbled, put one hand against the wall and the other against her forehead to steady herself. When the voice came to her, it was usually as a whisper at the back of her mind. This was direct, loud, and for a moment Tori felt sure her knees would buckle under the onslaught. She made a small cry, closed her eyes, and tried to fight against it.

And then it was gone.

She was sitting on the bed, though she couldn’t remember moving there. Sitting and shaking, the prickly feeling of cold sweat on her spine exacerbated by the rough cotton t-shirt she was wearing. Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in ragged gasps.The superhero feeling was gone. Left in its place was nothing more than a scared little girl, nervous and shaking, wondering what was wrong with herself. Tori dressed quickly, glanced one last time around the room, and left.

* * *

Her room was dark and bare and cold, not much more inviting than the motel she had left. There was a double bed on a steel frame at one end, a cheap desk at the other, adorned only with a laptop and a set of speakers. Tori’s mother often pressed her to decorate, but to Tori that seemed as though it would bring an unwelcome sense of permanence. This was not her home.

Tori loved her parents, was glad to be back with them, but could not see living here in their little ranch house, in this forgotten part of Ohio, as anything more than the most temporary of situations. After a dozen years of living in the woods surrounding Abraham’s palatial estate, Tori had come to value both freedom and solitude. The two-bedroom, single-bath house offered little respite from the presence of her parents. She shuddered to think what it would be like when her father retired.

She was pulling her clothes off when the knock came.
Great
, she thought, rolling her eyes. It would be Mona, of course – her mother. Tori was convinced that her father Jim would someday sleep through the apocalypse. She debated pretending to be asleep, decided against it, and opened the door.

“Hi, Mom.”

Mona was a short woman, plump from years of hearty, home-cooked meals and no lack of desserts. She had been beautiful once, like Tori, though not nearly so tall, and unlike many beautiful girls she had also been kind and friendly. She still retained a sort of glow about her that made most people feel comfortable. She was the type of woman, Tori reflected, that one thought of when somebody mentioned their grandmother. Kindly and concerned, Mona looked at Tori, and the worry in her eyes was touching.

“It’s very late, Tori.”

“I know. I’m sorry if I woke you … was I making too much noise?” Tori knew she wasn’t, knew that Mona didn’t sleep well even under the best of circumstances. Her mother confirmed this.

“No, no … I heard the car pull in. I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right.”

“Everything’s fine, Mom.”

Mona’s eyes searched Tori’s face for some hidden truth. “Your eyes are all puffy and … and you smell like cigarettes.”

Good,
Tori thought.
Better than smelling like Tom.
Out loud she said, “I was at a bar.”

“Until five in the morning?”

What could Tori say?
I was trying to drink myself blind when I met this guy, and I was horny and bored, and he was cute, so I took him to a motel and fucked his brains out. You know how it is, Mom.

Instead she shrugged, said, “We went to the diner for a snack and coffee. Got to talking.”

“We?” Mona raised an eyebrow.

“Mother …”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. You’re an adult and it’s none of my business. I just worry, angel.”

The guilt flared back up and Tori sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you or Dad. You know that. I don’t want you to be scared. What happened before, when I disappeared, I … trust me, it can never happen again.”

“I wish you’d tell us more about it. Your friend’s story, it … it doesn’t explain much.”

At first her parents had eaten up the explanations that Two and Tori had proffered. It was not until later, after much consideration and, Tori suspected, many sleepless nights on Mona’s part that they had begun to question. Tori felt anger warring with her guilt.

“No. There’s nothing more to tell, and you need to forget it, Mom. You can’t let it eat at you. Why won’t you trust me?”

“I do trust you, dear. I just—”

“You just worry. Right. Stop worrying.”

“I can’t.”

Tori sighed. “I have to work at ten.”

Mona frowned. “You don’t get enough sleep.”

“I’ll get what I need, if you’ll let me.”

Mona looked at her for a long time, and Tori wondered what it was her mother was seeing. Surely not the daughter she had sent off to college twelve years before, a bubbly, vivacious girl who had been quick to smile and friendly to everyone she met. What must Mona think about this new version of her daughter, the one who was brooding, angry all the time, harsh and judgmental?

Tori looked back, unflinching, saddened by the knowledge that the changes within her must be hurting and confusing her mother, but unwilling to divulge what had happened, how she had become what she now was. At last, Mona dropped her gaze and nodded.

“Good night, dear,” she said to the girl who had once been her daughter. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom,” Tori said. She moved backward, and let the door close with a small thump. She turned the lock mechanism, moved to her window, opened it and lit a cigarette. From the hallway she heard her mother sigh and shuffle off, making her way back to bed.

* * *

Tori worked in a nondescript industrial park in Lima, Ohio as an administrative assistant for a dentist, and her job seemed to her the epitome of everything that was wrong with her life in this place. It was boring, slow-paced, unchallenging, and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Patients came in. Tori retrieved their files. The doctor checked their teeth. Tori marked down their next appointment date, filed the papers, moved on to the next patient. This kept her busy for perhaps twenty minutes out of every hour.

Most of her time was spent sitting at her desk, answering phone calls and playing solitaire on the single computer in the office, waiting for her next cigarette break. The doctor frowned on the smoking, of course. Tori supposed this was hardly surprising, coming from someone who cleaned teeth for a living, but she also knew that she was better at the job than any of the previous girls he had employed, and probably nicer to look at. She felt safe for the time being, if not content. The job paid her few expenses, bought her booze and cigarettes, and provided a reason to get out of the house and away from her parents. What else was there?

Her father had asked her, once, when Mona was out of earshot, if Tori had ever thought about returning to college. She had been a student in good standing at Syracuse University before her disappearance. They would likely take her back. Did that still interest her?

Tori had sighed, frowned, shrugged. Did it interest her? No. She had spent her two years there cheerleading, taking liberal arts courses, and dating a nice young finance major. She had no further interest in cheerleading, could not think of a single course of study that would hold her attention, and the finance major was now thirty-five years old, divorced, and living with a mistress just over half his age in Manhattan. Besides, Mona would have a heart attack if Tori announced any intention to return to the school from which she had been abducted. Why spend the money? Why deal with the stress? Why bother? There was no point.

Tori wished sometimes that she could explain her ennui. She wished she could articulate the feeling of desperate, hopeless, helpless apathy that seemed to have consumed her since Two’s return to New York. She was here, going through her days mostly by rote, her only real escape the assortment of bars downtown, located not far from I-75 and a reliable source of new, anonymous partners with whom to spend the night.

She didn’t know how to put it into words, this feeling, heavy like a weight around her neck. Nor could she think of any means of escape. She suspected that moving to New York, though the most obvious course of action, would only leave her equally empty and many times as broke. Two was there, and perhaps that was something, but when Tori thought of seeing her friend again some indescribable feeling, half-hidden, impossible to identify or understand, welled up inside her in protest. At these times, faced with this sudden pain that she wished neither to contemplate nor comprehend, Tori would simply turn her thoughts to other matters.

She was on break now, sitting outside in the early September warmth, smoking a cigarette and purposefully not-thinking about these things. Sometimes there were other people out there, in the space between her building and the one next door, smoking and chatting. Sometimes Tori would have to make small talk, a process that did little more than frustrate her. Today there was no one, and that was good. She sat on a stone bench, staring up at the sky, smoking and trying not to think at all.

Nan pareson sa,
the voice said at the back of her mind, and Tori barely noticed it. This was more common than the blast that had knocked away her senses at the motel earlier that morning, and Tori had become used to it. She supposed she should be more concerned about hearing phantom voices, even when they were quiet. Tori supposed she should be more concerned about a lot of things.

Nan Kefaleson sa. Nan effriteson sa.
Nan afalmeson sa iae vilestro cheo tuvi kashituvre ma vishtati a nav.

Nonsense words in her head, and that crawling feeling of being watched. She had investigated this sensation in the past. It was this, more than the voices, that made her uncomfortable … this feeling of eyes crawling over her, appraising her. It was not like being at the bar. Tori was used to having her breasts stared at, or her legs, or her rear. This feeling was similar but not the same. Greedy and covetous, but not sexual. Whoever was coveting her wanted her for some other purpose.

She had spent time searching, but if someone was out there watching her she had been unable to find them, and eventually Tori had given up looking. If schizophrenia was a side effect of all the changes vampirism had wrought on her body, there was little to be done about it.

She smoked the cigarette down to the filter in just a few short minutes, wanting to be away from the sensation. The voices were usually weaker indoors, and the feeling of being watched usually left her entirely. She felt a wave of relief and grim humor as she escaped back into the confines of the office building that she had so recently been desperate to leave. Upstairs, a half-finished game of solitaire was waiting for her.

* * *

Her father was out in their back yard grilling steaks when Tori arrived home. She could smell potatoes baking in the oven, and a large pot of corn ears was steaming on the stovetop. Tori glanced out through the screen door, watching her father tend the grill for a moment, then grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge. She opened both and brought them with her out to the yard. The mid-September air was warm, but there was a scent of autumn on the breeze.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said, holding a beer out for him. He turned and smiled. Tori took her height from Jim, and her blue eyes. His hair, once brown, was now mostly grey. Two years away from sixty, her father was still in reasonable shape, with a broad chest and only the slightest hint of a belly. He was wearing a battered pair of jeans and a grey mechanic’s shirt.

“Thanks, sweetheart. How was work?”

Tori shrugged. “Same old, same old. You?”

He smiled. “Still got a job. Can’t complain.”

The economy in Lima and the surrounding area had been on a downward slide for several months. Many people had been fired, laid off, or transferred. Still more had simply moved on, looking for other opportunities. Tori’s father worked for a plant on the outskirts of the city that manufactured tanks for the military. He spent most of his time maintaining Cold War–era electronics that there was no money to upgrade. It was a relatively safe, stable job, and Tori hoped it would last until he could retire.

“I suppose that’s the truth,” she said, and she sipped at her beer. It still felt strange drinking around her father, like she was getting away with something she wasn’t supposed to do.

“Your mother said you came in late last night.”

Jim’s back was to her, so Tori couldn’t read his expression. She grimaced, then took another drink, opting not to respond to the statement.

“Don’t want to talk about it?” Jim asked, after her silence made it obvious that no reply was forthcoming.

“Not really.”

“We worry about you, hon.”

Tori sighed. Why did people always ask if you wanted to talk about something, when they were going to push on regardless of your answer?

“There’s nothing to worry about,” she told him. “I’m a big girl. Believe me, I can take care of myself.”

“That may be true, but you’re still young—”