Blood Hunt (52 page)

“Precisely.” Naomi moved to a small metal plate attached to one of the stone columns that supported the gate. She inserted a key and the cover swung open, revealing a keypad. Naomi pressed several digits in rapid succession, pushed a large green button, and watched the tiny LCD screen. After a moment there was a single beep, and the screen flashed.

“Good?” Two asked.

“Yes. Here,” Naomi said, and handed Two a key for the padlock on the gate. Two used it, the lock’s action working smoothly, and in a moment she held the open padlock in her hand. She looped it through one link in the chain, leaving it open, and took a deep breath.

“Let’s go,” she said, and she pushed the gate open. They made their way up toward the mansion, Naomi taking the lead as they neared it. She brought Two to where the concrete slab lay, and they stood for a moment looking at it.

“Think we’re strong enough to move that?” Two asked.

“Let’s hope so, otherwise we’ve made a long trip for nothing,” Naomi said. She bent down and wrapped her fingers under the slab, as Two did the same. Naomi counted to three and tensed her muscles, attempting to slide the block sideways. Two pushed as well, trying to help. After a moment, the concrete began to make a grinding noise as they slid it aside, revealing the door beneath – and a host of scrabbling black beetles, now hunting for cover.

“Gross,” Two said.

Naomi made a noise of agreement and reached down, brushing a few of the beetles away from the door’s lock and inserting the key. She twisted it counter-clockwise twice, clicks and ratcheting noises echoing from the lock mechanism, and then pulled on the large handle. The steel door creaked as it swung upward, revealing the stone stairway beneath.

Two stared into the receding darkness with some trepidation and glanced up at Naomi, who gestured for Two to go ahead.

“I feel like Abraham’s going to be down there waiting for me,” Two said.

“You cut off Abraham’s head and burned him to ashes,” Naomi replied.

“Yeah,” Two said. “Still …”

She began to descend down into the chamber, Naomi following. Two could hear nothing from below, only the sound of their footsteps, the faint rush of wind from above, the occasional skittering sound of some small creature behind the wall. The staircase smelled dusty and dry, and several times on her way down Two was forced to push her way through large cobwebs. At last they reached the bottom, exiting out into a large, dark chamber stuffed full of furniture and other objects that the vampire council had apparently deemed too precious to burn.

At the far end, Theroen’s lifeless body lay on a stone table, covered by a white sheet lined with a thin layer of dust. Two stepped forward, heart pounding, and pulled the sheet from the body.

“Jesus, Naomi … he looks exactly the same!” she exclaimed.

Theroen’s body lay before them, pale and thin but otherwise spared from the ravages of time. He was still wearing the black suit in which Abraham had dressed him, preparing him for a cremation that had never come. If not for his lack of breath, he might have been taking a nap. Two felt her heart wrench at the sight of him, felt pain and grief spring forward, as fresh within her as the day she had lost him.

“We are lucky,” Naomi said, and Two could hear a kind of breathlessness in her voice that sounded like awe. “His blood must be very strong.”

“I don’t know if I can do this …” Two felt sick to her stomach with worry and excitement.

“You can. I know you can. Do you have the blood?”

Two had barely let go of the two vials in their slim silver casings since leaving Naomi’s apartment. She reached now into the small interior pocket of her leather jacket and took them out, holding them up to the light, wondering if her hands were shaking too hard to spring the tiny locks. She dug in the pocket of her blue jeans with the other hand, fishing for the key.

Naomi was looking at Theroen, head slightly tilted. “He had longer hair when I knew him,” she said at last.

“He told me he changed it to keep up with whatever a guy in his early twenties would probably look like, you know … during whatever time period. Clothes, hair, all of it.”

Naomi nodded. “I do the same – you have to. If I was still wandering around in the sort of clothing that was popular when Lisette first found me, it would look rather odd.”

“Yeah,” Two replied. Two had set the cylinders on the table next to Theroen and was looking at her hands now, willing them to steady. Naomi said nothing, waiting, and eventually Two was able to unlock the cases and remove the vials. The two women stood for another moment in silence.

“We can’t make him swallow,” Naomi said at last. “We’ll need to inject it.”

“I don’t have anything—”

“I brought a syringe,” Naomi said, digging in her purse. “Do you think we should mix the blood first or inject twice?”

Two shrugged. “It’s going to mix in him anyway, right?”

“Yes.” Naomi held out the syringe, which was much larger than the ones Two had used to shoot up with in a time that felt so long ago she thought of it almost as prehistory.

“Should I worry about air bubbles?” Two asked.

“I doubt we’re going to give him a stroke,” Naomi replied, her voice dry.

“All the same …” Two filled the syringe with blood from one vial, and then from the other, holding it aloft and tapping it to clear the air from it. When she was done, she looked again at Theroen.

“My love, I’m so scared,” she whispered to him. She touched his face, the skin icy cold. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“There is no reason to delay,” Naomi said. “It won’t get any easier with time, and there is no other way to know.”

Two nodded, took a deep breath, took her hand away from Theroen’s face. Her heart was pounding, throbbing painfully in her chest, and she felt dizzy. Sick. Her muscles ached with tension and breathing seemed difficult.

“What do I do?” she asked, her voice somewhere between a whisper and a croak.

Naomi reached out and put her hand on Theroen’s jaw, tilting his head and exposing the neck. The skin was clean and unblemished, no bite marks visible from Abraham’s final, deadly attack. Whether this was a sign of healing from within or simply a factor of the minor healing properties in vampire saliva, Two didn’t know. Naomi tapped against Theroen’s skin.

“That’s the jugular,” she said. “It’s as good a place as any … we don’t have the equipment necessary to go through his breastplate and into his heart. Frankly, I don’t even know if that matters.”

“I don’t think I could stab him in the chest anyway,” Two said. She felt sick just contemplating the idea of shoving the needle into Theroen’s neck. Nonetheless, she brought the tip forward, pressing it to the point that Naomi had indicated.

“Push in first, then angle up a little,” Naomi said, and Two could hear tension in the vampire girl’s voice now. “Watch for blood. His skin won’t have any … there’s not enough left, but the jugular itself might.”

Two took a deep breath and did as she was told. After some resistance, the needle pierced Theroen’s skin and slid forward into his flesh. Two angled upward a bit as Naomi had told her, and a single drop of blood welled up around the syringe’s metal shaft.

“That’s it,” Naomi said. “Do it!”

Two pressed the plunger, injecting the mix of elder blood into Theroen’s lifeless body. Once every bit had been pushed into him, she withdrew the needle.

“What should I do with this?” she asked.

Naomi took it from her and tossed it casually into a darkened corner. “We’re done with that. Step back, Two. I have no idea what may happen now.”

The two women took several steps backward and stood, watching and waiting for some sign from Theroen’s prone form that the blood was working within him. Seconds passed, became minutes. Two felt frantic, her heart still pounding, her breath still coming too fast. Was it working? How could they know?

She was drawing in a breath, preparing to ask Naomi these questions, when Theroen’s arm twitched. Two’s chest locked, her heart seeming to redouble in its throbbing, her hands balling up into small, tight fists. She wanted to ask if Naomi had seen it, wanted to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, but she couldn’t seem to find her voice.

Before she was able to do so, Theroen made the question irrelevant. His entire body heaved, curling from the slab at his midsection so that only his shoulders and heels touched the table. He drew in a ragged, gasping breath that seemed to go on and on, filling his lungs until Two felt sure they must burst.

And then he began to scream.

The noise rose, starting loud and growing into a horrific, ear-splitting wail of agony. Theroen’s fingernails scraped audibly against the stone table as his hands clenched and unclenched, scrabbling for purchase. He drew in another breath with a horrible sound like tearing cloth and continued to scream. Two felt herself surging forward instinctively, screaming herself, terrified and wanting only to help him if she could. Naomi grabbed her shoulders and jerked her painfully backward.

“For God’s
sake,
Two, stay back!” the vampire cried over the noise of Theroen’s screaming. His body was convulsing now, arms flailing madly, legs kicking, beating his heels repeatedly against the stone table in a ghastly drum roll. The screaming went on and on, interrupted only by those harsh and terrible gasps for air, until Two felt sure the sound of it would drive her insane. She was still struggling against Naomi’s grip, still trying to get to Theroen, to help him in some way.

It ended without warning, Theroen’s voice suddenly cutting off in mid-scream. His muscles relaxed and he fell back onto the table, hands at his sides, motionless.

“Oh, Jesus … God … no!” Two cried. Had they brought him back from the dead only to kill him with the power of the blood? “Theroen!”

At the sound of her cries, Theroen’s head turned to the side, the rest of his body still motionless. His eyes opened, and for a moment Two saw nothing behind them, no recognition, not even a spark of consciousness. Then they seemed to clear, focus, and Two felt her entire body clench in excitement at what she saw there. Not fear or pain, not madness or hate. She saw only calm and peace. There was a slight smile on his lips, that bemusing, mysterious smile that she so loved to kiss. She was looking at Theroen Anders, the man she loved, and he was unquestionably alive. Awake. Aware.

“Well,” Theroen said after a moment’s pause, still looking over at them. “
That
was unpleasant.”

Two put her face in her hands and wept.

* * *

“Two … look at me.”

She had heard that voice countless times in her dreams these past two years. She had heard and woken weeping sometimes, as she was weeping now. She had never expected to hear it again outside of those dreams, and faced with it now she found she could not obey the command.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, and the voice came again.

“Why not?”

“Because this might not be real!”

Two felt hands,
his
hands, take hers and move them gently away from her face. She could see a male figure before her, wearing a black suit. Theroen put a hand under her chin and raised her face to look at his.

“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he said, and Two laughed, incredulous and still weeping.

“You’re really alive,” she said.

Theroen nodded.

“I’m not dreaming?”

He shook his head and smiled. “No.”

Two leapt forward, flinging her arms around his neck, pressing her lips against his, wrapping her fingers into his hair. She kissed him with a raw passion that she had honestly forgotten she was capable of. Theroen kissed back, put his own hands in her hair. Two could feel the twin points of his elongated canine teeth as he pulled gently at her lower lip. She sighed and shivered, holding him to her, kissing and kissing. Theroen wrapped his arms around her lower back and lifted her off her feet.

At last, Two spoke around his lips. “Don’t you ever,
ever
leave me again, you asshole! You don’t get to die without me twice.”

Theroen laughed, kissed her, set her down. “I will try to avoid it.”

Two at last moved her lips away from his and stood with her arms around him, face against his chest. Theroen glanced over her head at the other party in the chamber.

“It is good to see you, Naomi. I feared you were dead.”

Naomi smiled, nodded. “I am glad to see you as well. It has been far too long. How do you feel?”

Theroen contemplated this for a moment. “I could use a shower.”

Two laughed against his chest. She was trying to make herself let go of him, embarrassed by her own behavior, but was having a hard time doing so. Finally, she forced herself to take a step back, letting go of Theroen’s waist but taking his hands in her own.

“I think she was worried more about the whole screaming thing,” Two said. “Are you all right? Does it still hurt?”

“No, the pain went from excruciating to … gone, in a blink. I am hungry, and I feel somehow different. I must also confess to some confusion. I don’t know how to say this, but
when
is it? Time must have passed. It
must
have, or Naomi would not be here now, and you would not be a human, and Abraham … what happened to Abraham? How long has it been?”

“You’ve been dead for nearly two years,” Naomi said in a gentle voice.

Theroen was silent for a time, contemplating this revelation. “Two years,” he murmured. “Dead?”

“It’s a long story,” Two said.

“It feels like
yesterday
,” Theroen said. “It feels like it was just last night that Abraham … I remember nothing. There were no dreams, no thoughts.”

“You were dead,” Naomi repeated. “Your heart stopped. Your breathing stopped. Your brain function stopped. The only thing preventing you from rotting into the earth was the trace amount of blood that Abraham left in you.”

“And now, somehow, you have brought me back,” Theroen said. “But it has been two years and I … I do not feel the same.”

“You’re not the same,” Two said.

Theroen pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “There is much you need to tell me.”