Blood Hunt (6 page)

And of course there was Tori, the girl whose mind had been cracked by vampirism and who Rhes himself had watched return more and more to humanity with each passing day. Her tales of the mansion, of the things she had seen and done there, had been simultaneously fascinating and repugnant, and they had hammered home the point to Rhes and Sarah over and over again. Yes, there were vampires. Yes, Two had been among them.

No, that didn’t make it any easier to talk about.

Sarah finally broke the silence. “I don’t suppose we can do that for her, no.”

“I don’t know what’s left except to let her go, but I just can’t do it. It hurts.”

“I know, baby. I don’t want to let her go either.”

“Maybe Tori could help her?”

Sarah shrugged. “Who knows? Tori spent most of her time running around naked in the forest, doing things she’s pretty ashamed of. I don’t think she has quite the same impression of it all that Two has.”

“Probably not,” Rhes said. He stood up and headed toward the kitchen. After a moment, Sarah followed him.

“You want me to make dinner?” she asked.

“I’ll do it. What do you want?”

“First? A hug. After that, maybe spaghetti.”

Rhes gave a small laugh, crossed the kitchen, and put his arms around Sarah. She held him tightly in her own, resting her head against his chest.

“This sucks,” she said.

“You’re the one who asked for it.”

She laughed a little. “Not that. I mean this whole thing with Two. Why should we even care, Rhes? It’s not like she wants us to. She’d be happier if we didn’t.”

“Yeah. But we care because she’s our friend, and we can’t make ourselves stop. We know who Two is when she’s healthy and … and right. We like that person a lot, and what we’re seeing now is someone else.”

Sarah nodded, let him go, moved to the cupboard and pulled a pot from it. She walked over to the sink, filled the pot with water, set it to boil on the stove. Her spatial awareness never ceased to amaze Rhes, who had trouble crossing an open room in the dark without finding a way to hurt himself. He took a package of spaghetti from the pantry closet and laid it on the counter.

“The person we’re seeing now is creepy,” Sarah said. “There’s some open sauce in the fridge.”

“Thanks. Yes, it’s creepy. It’s wrong and sad and frustrating, which is why I sometimes have to bang shit around and take walks in the rain.”

Sarah turned her head as if looking at him, an action still ingrained from her childhood, when she’d been able to see.

“That was my fault,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it was both of our faults. And Two’s fault. And probably if I wanted to get real worked up about it, I could find a way to blame Jesus, too. But it doesn’t really matter … it’s just a touchy subject because we don’t have any answers.”

“Maybe we should stop letting her close us out. I dunno … maybe go talk to her in person, grab her by the shoulders, slap her around. Make her realize there’s still a whole world out here and that she should stop living with the dead.”

“Works in movies,” Rhes said, shrugging. “Don’t know about real life. I think she’s likely to just give you that laugh of hers, the one that’s all sarcastic and pissed off, like you should quit wasting her time.”

“Yeah, well, so I get the laugh. Big deal. I’ve gotten it over the phone a ton of times since she came back that last time, when she said the place had burned down. I could deal with the laugh if I thought what I had to say was going to have any effect on her.”

“Think it will?”

Sarah paused for a minute and leaned backward against the counter, arching her back and stretching, which caused her sweater to press tight against her breasts. Rhes paused with his hand outstretched over the pot of water, ready to drop a handful of spaghetti in, taking an opportunity to admire the view she was unintentionally providing. There was a lot to admire; Sarah was five-eight, in good shape, with straight red hair that she was currently keeping at shoulder length and a cute spread of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Rhes had met her when he had stopped to ask if he could pet her guide dog, Jake, during jazz night at a local coffee shop. By the end of the evening, he had thought he might be falling in love.

“Quit staring at me like that,” Sarah said with a laugh. Rhes rolled his eyes and dropped the pasta in to the water, stirring a few times.

“Quit
standing
like that, then. Anyway, you’re not supposed to know I’m looking!”

“Right, right … one of the perks of dating a blind chick. We’ve got crazy hoodoo, though. We know what you’re doing.”

“At the moment, what I’m doing is waiting for an answer to my question.”

Sarah smiled at him as he poured tomato sauce into a pan and set it on the stove.

“I’m getting to it. Add some oregano and salt and stuff to that. It’s not so great right out of the jar.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“To answer your question, no … I don’t think confronting her will accomplish anything, but I’m not averse to trying it.”

“Mmm. I’m not sure I can handle seeing her again in person. The last time was brutal, and that was, like, two months ago.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “But on the plus side, she’s probably even more detached than she was, so at least she might not start crying again.”

“You noticed that, too?”

“Pretty sure the only person who didn’t notice was Two. She just kept right on talking in that dead voice.”

“So how’d you know?”

“She started sniffling.”

Rhes shook his head, amazed. “I would never have noticed that.”

“You don’t need to. You’ve got all five senses available to you.”

“Yeah, but I—”

The phone rang, cutting Rhes off. He reached over and picked it up, stirring sauce with his free hand. On the other end of the line he could hear someone gasping for breath, and realized after a moment that he whoever he was listening to was weeping.

“Hello?” he asked. Sarah looked up, immediately aware of the change in his tone.

On the phone, the person seemed to be struggling to gain control of their tears. Finally Rhes heard, “Z’iss Rhes?”

“Yes, this is Rhes? Who’s this?”

“S’Tori.”

“Oh, hey! Tori, are you OK?”

There was a pause and some snuffling. Rhes thought he heard tissues being pulled from a box, rapid-fire, one after another.

“No, ‘spose not,” said Tori.

“What’s wrong?”

“D’you know where … where Two is?” Tori’s words were slurred, and not just from crying. Rhes thought she might be drunk.

“No, sorry. I called her this afternoon and she was home.”

“Not now,” Tori replied.

“Did you try her cell?”

“Juss rings an’ rings. Stupid. I need to t-talk to her
now
.”

“Well, if I hear anything from her I’ll tell her to call you. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Too late … Rhes, ‘sallover now. They’re gone. Oh, no. No.”

Tori began to sob again. Rhes listened, feeling bewildered.

“Who’s gone? Tori? Who are you talking about?”

“She left me!” Tori shouted. “Left me here, and now they’re gone and she’s not there. You tell her, Rhes. You tell her it’s all her fault.”

“Tori, what happened?”

“Gotta go.”

Tori hung up on him. After a moment, Rhes set the phone down in its cradle and returned to stirring the tomato sauce.

“… the
hell
was that about?” Sarah asked him.

“Not sure. She was super drunk, and crying so hard I could barely get what she was saying. Except when she started shouting about how Two left her there and that it’s all her fault.”

“I heard that part all the way over here,” Sarah said. “What’s all Two’s fault though? Should we call her back?”

“Probably.”

Sarah waited a moment. “You uh … gonna?”

“You know those scenes in movies where someone goes ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ and they’re always right?”

Sarah nodded.

Rhes frowned. “That’s how I feel right now.”

* * *

Sarah made the call, but Tori wasn’t answering her phone, nor was there any kind of voicemail or answering machine. After letting it ring for nearly five minutes, Sarah gave up, returned the handset to its cradle, and helped Rhes bring dinner to the table. They ate without saying much, contemplating the day’s troubling calls, wondering what was happening to their friends.

“I guess we should check the news,” Rhes said when they were done. “You get the TV, I’ll get the ‘net.”

It hadn’t made the New York news channels, but it didn’t take Rhes long to hunt down what had happened on the Internet. He found the story on a local news site and read it to Sarah, feeling her hand gripping ever tighter on his shoulder as the article explained that, though the police would not reveal the exact nature of the crimes, Tori’s parents had most certainly been tortured before their eventual murder.

When the article reached Tori’s alibi, Sarah’s hand relaxed. “Oh, thank Christ,” she said weakly.

“Did you think she did it?” Rhes asked. He wasn’t trying to accuse her, and thought he had managed to keep any suggestion otherwise out of his voice. Sarah didn’t seem offended.

“Yes. Well, no, I mean … I didn’t think she’d do something like that, but you have to consider the possibility. You know what she was. It’s not that hard to make the leap.”

“No, it’s not, you’re right. My brain just hadn’t made it yet. She’s safe, though. Coroner says they were hours old when Tori found them. She was at that bar during most of it … eight witnesses there, and then the other guy.”

“The motel attendant, after, right. I’m sure she was thrilled to have
that
written in all the papers. But yeah, I know she didn’t do it. I was just scared that she might have, for a minute.”

“I know. God … what do we do now?”

Sarah looked bewildered. “I have no idea. I don’t think we can just pack up and go to Ohio, at least not for a couple of days. We’ve got work, and Molly’s got school … but Tori’s going to need all kinds of help, and I don’t know if she’s got anyone out there or not. We have to find Two first.”

“Why didn’t Tori call us before? Christ, it’s been more than a day already.”

“Don’t know. She’s probably not thinking very clearly, and really, she didn’t even want to call us. She wanted to call Two. We were the backup plan.”

“Ok, so what now?”

“We find Two.” Sarah looked very concerned.

“Tori said she’s not home.”

“Tori said she’s not
answering
. That doesn’t mean she’s not home … not at all. She may not be
able
to answer. Hon, we have to find her. This is really bad. I don’t think it’s random coincidence that something like this is happening to Tori. If someone’s targeting her, don’t you think that Two’s in danger?”

“Oh. Shit, Sarah …”

“Right. Let’s go.”

Rhes and Sarah left their dishes on the table and headed for Manhattan.

Chapter 3
Manhattan by Moonlight

Two was drowning in blood.

The liquid ran down her forehead in rivers, pooled in the corners of her eyes, dripped past her lips and swirled hot on her tongue. Eyes shut, she opened her mouth wide and drank, drank, searching for the source, bathing in blood, immersing herself completely. Yet even in this bliss, this joy, this beauty, there was still that cold ball in her stomach. There was still the dull grey veil that sucked the life from her vision, even with her eyes shut. It covered her dreams, destroyed her fantasies, brought her always back to harsh reality.

This isn’t real.

Yes it is.

No.

Two turned off the shower and rested her head against the slate tiles that lined the wall. The liquid running from her hair, dripping on the floor, steaming on her pink skin was water, not blood. There was no blood for her, or at least none that mattered. There was only her own, being pushed through her veins by a heart not yet slowed to stillness by sickness or accident, age or apathy.

The blood was gone, buried and probably burned to ashes below the bones of what had once been a lavish mansion situated in the forests of southern New York state, near the Pennsylvania border. The blood was buried there with the man she loved, the vampire Theroen. She had not had the courage to explore the charred remains of the mansion to find out whether his body had survived the blaze.

It didn’t matter anyway. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; Theroen was dead.

When she had arrived at the mansion and found it burnt to the ground, she had sat there for a time on the hood of her car, smoking cigarettes and looking at the pile of charcoal and ash that had, for a few short months, been her home. It was during this time of reflection, as she replayed over and over in her mind the events that had lifted her up from the streets and brought her salvation only to leave her alone again, that it seemed the grey veil had descended to cover her sight. The cold feeling had begun to gnaw at her stomach, the first stirrings of despair. The house was gone. Theroen was gone.

That part of her life was over, and now all that remained was the time ahead, time that seemed to stretch like a vast sea, calm and still and empty. She could not forget the warmth of the blood, could not take that taste from her lips. Life under the sun offered no comfort, but she knew that the task before her was daunting. Finding another vampire would be difficult. Convincing that vampire, or any other, to bring her back into the world that she longed to inhabit might well prove impossible.

When she returned from Ohio she began her search in earnest, and in the following weeks, as the last vestiges of hope faded and the icy despair within her grew, Two began to withdraw. She did it intentionally, to protect her friends and herself. She could see that she was hurting them, and this saddened her, but she couldn’t lift the grey veil, couldn’t shake the grief or erase the pain. She couldn’t bring back what she had lost, and her friends’ attempts at consolation seemed only to drive this home all the more clearly. So she had established distance, losing herself in the cold and the grey, giving in to the apathy that her brain had begun to produce in a last attempt to counteract the sadness and hopelessness that threatened to overtake her completely.