Blood of Gold (25 page)

He and Sylvie made the most of their privacy, hoping that the rocking of the little motor home wasn’t too noticeable. The vampires were parked, caravan style, in a state park outside of La Pine in Central Oregon, preparing the make the final push to Crescent City that night.

Sylvie lay in Terrill’s arms late into the day, but he couldn’t sleep. They were headed into extreme danger, Terrill and the followers of
The Testament of Michael
, all of whom were vampires.

All but Sylvie.

Vampires weren’t easy to kill. You had to behead them, more or less, though a stake left in the heart would kill most of them eventually. Fire and the sun would do it, of course. But these were Golden Vampires, and even those methods weren’t enough anymore.

That Clarkson, the most capable vampire outside of himself and Michael that Terrill had ever known, had been defeated by one of these so-called Shadow Vampires meant they were in a real struggle for survival.

In spite of everything, Terrill still had fewer than thirty Golden Vampires as followers: twenty-nine of them, to be exact. When he’d laid down his ultimatum, “Accept the blood of gold or else,” most of his wannabe disciples had fled into the hills.

One more of the recipients of the blood of gold had failed and disintegrated before their eyes. At that point, Robert and Jamie had taken Terrill aside and pleaded with him to stop.

“This isn’t right,” Robert had said. “You must let them choose when they’re ready. To insist is to risk their lives. They want to believe in you, Terrill. Some of them want to become one of us so badly, they convince themselves they’re ready before they are.”

“We don’t have time to wait for everyone to decide,” Terrill had replied. “The Shadow Vampires are coming.”

“But if we force vampires to risk their own deaths, we are no better than them,” Jamie had said imploringly.

Terrill had looked over at Sylvie, who’d looked away. For a moment, he had felt doubt. If Robert Jurgenson and Jamie, the two people he admired more than any others, were against his plan, maybe he was wrong.

In his mind, he had again seen the vision of a land of Wilderings and darkness, and had shaken his head. “It has to be done. Let them run away, if they must.”

In the end, only five more Golden Vampires were added to the rolls. If, as Terrill suspected, the Shadow Vampires were their antithesis, he had to wonder how many converts the enemy had managed to Turn. Knowing the human/vampire heart, Terrill wasn’t hopeful.

He was certain that the Shadow Vampires were also the result of long-planned evolution, probably by someone nearly as old as Michael, but without his Maker’s compassion.

Terrill fingered the metal cross that was fused to his chest. He’d been vampire, then human, and now he was a combination of both. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Shadow Vampires had suddenly appeared after he’d been transformed.

He remembered what he’d said to Matt: “To kill is evil. All vampires kill. Therefore all vampires are evil.” Only the Golden Vampires didn’t kill humans in order to eat. Until now, Terrill had hoped to persuade his former brethren, the blue-blooded vampires, to join him. He’d been under no illusions about how long that might take. It was not an easy choice. But he kept coming back to that basic syllogism: “To kill is evil. All vampires kill. Therefore all vampires are evil.”
Can vampires be only partly evil?
he wondered.
Can I look the other way any longer?

With the rise of the Shadow Vampires, he didn’t think he could. The Shadow Vampires and whoever it was who controlled them weren’t going to wait. They were going to seek out other vampires and Turn them to Shadow, or destroy them. Terrill couldn’t see that he had any choice but to follow their example. But he’d give vampires a different choice: renounce evil once and for all, or be damned.

“Can’t sleep?” Sylvie spoke against his chest, and he felt the huff of her breath on his skin.

“Here and there,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” She sat up, pulling her long black hair away from her face. Her breasts emerged from the sheets, and he had an impulse to dive between them and continue the day the way they had begun it.

“You can’t go with us, Sylvie,” he said. He hadn’t even realized he’d made the decision until the words were out of his mouth. “It’s too dangerous.”

She laughed, but uncertainly. “I’m surrounded by Golden Vampires. How much safer can I be?”

“You don’t understand, Sylvie. How can I fight effectively if I’m worried about you all the time?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sylvie said. “Jamie will take care of me.”

“Clarkson died, Sylvie. I would have bet she’d outlast us all. She never took chances; she always knew how to fight. If a Shadow Vampire defeated her, they can defeat anyone.”

“But not you,” Sylvie said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Perhaps…”

She patted his leg. “Don’t worry. God is on our side, right?”

“Yeah, how many times have I heard that over the centuries, just as some army was about to massacre some other army? Funny thing is, until the battle started, both sides were convinced God was on their side.”

“You were chosen by Michael,” Sylvie pointed out.

“Oh, what a load of crap!” Terrill cried. “I knew Michael better than anyone, and he was just like the rest of us, except a lot older. Don’t believe all this nonsense Marc is putting out. I don’t know where he’s getting it. Michael was just a guy. Just another vampire.”

“But
you
aren’t,” Sylvie said. “I saw you Turn from vampire to human, and that wouldn’t have happened if the good, the light, God, whatever you want to call it, wasn’t on your side.”

Terrill didn’t respond at first. There was a time when he would have accepted this mantle of power. He would have thought it his due. He would have reveled in it. He wouldn’t have had any doubts.
Funny thing about that,
he thought.
It wasn’t until I had doubts that I was given this power.

“That still doesn’t keep
you
safe,” he said finally. “You’re too vulnerable. I think we should leave you here in La Pine, book a room in one of the motels. I’ll come get you when it’s over.”

“Do you really believe I’ll be safe here if you lose?” she asked.

Terrill groaned and threw his head back into his pillow. “Shit, shit! Probably not.”

Sylvie reached over and ran a soft hand across his cheek. “Poor Golden Vampire,” she murmured. She leaned over and kissed him, then ran her hand down his body and grabbed hold of him.

He kissed her back as if was the last time, and he realized it might really be. He knew she wouldn’t stay here, anyway, no matter how much he tried to convince her.

This time, they didn’t worry about the motor home rocking, and when the springs began to squeak, they couldn’t help but laugh even as they continued to make love.

#

Darkness was falling when Terrill woke up. Sylvie was leaning over him, gazing at his face with a gentle expression. “OK,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“Do what? You’ll stay here?” His heart leapt. If she were safe here in La Pine, it would be so much easier to fight in the coming battle.

“I will let you Turn me.”

The words didn’t penetrate at first. And then the world shifted and clicked into place, and everything was all right. It was the final piece of the puzzle, somehow.
Damn,
he thought.
I’m getting as mystical as Marc.
“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I’m very sure,” she said. A flicker of doubt crossed her face, but her voice didn’t reflect it.

“What… what made you change your mind?”

She put her head back on her pillow and stared at the ceiling. “You were right. It was unfair of me to make you worry. I don’t want you to make the wrong decision in the heat of battle because of something I’ve done…”

Her voice trailed off, and Terrill sensed there was more. “And?”

She sat up and took his hands. “I was being a hypocrite, Terrill. How could I love you and think you’re good, and be so certain that you’re on the side of right, and yet at the same time think that vampires are unnatural? It’s fear. That’s all it is. I was afraid of what I might become, but not anymore. I trust you, Terrill. I trust that you’ll keep me from becoming evil. Promise me.”

“Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that!” Terrill said. “You’ll become one of us. Like Jamie and me. Trust me, Sylvie. You won’t have to do anything against your scruples.”

She smiled sadly. “I know.”

They heard a knock on the door and then Jamie’s voice. “You guys ready to head out?”

“Give us one hour,” Terrill shouted.

“Geez,” he heard Jamie mutter. “How many times can you do it in one day, already?”

Terrill felt completely energized.
It is all going to work out,
he thought.

“This will be a little different,” he said, getting out of bed and throwing his clothes on. “I have to Turn you into a vampire first. With this new strain, you’ll be… out… for about half an hour.”

Sylvie lay in bed, a serene expression on her face. Terrill’s fangs came out and he leaned over her, then pulled back. “Uh, this might hurt a little,” he warned her.

“You think?”

He leaned down over her neck and stared at the veins in her skin
. Have I ever wondered if it hurt?
he thought
. I don’t think it ever occurred to me.
He hesitated, smelling her clean porcelain skin. He was going to lose the human Sylvie forever. But there would be no difference, right? She would still be Sylvie, only stronger, nearly invulnerable. Isn’t that what he believed?

It wasn’t turning out to be so easy to overcome the centuries when he had believed differently, when he had known he was evil, that all vampires were evil. Beautiful Sylvie. Could he bear to Turn her into one of them?

The blood of gold gives us the power to choose right over wrong,
Terrill thought. It sounded like one of Marc’s sayings, but he was certain he had just made it up.

“You’re starting to make me nervous,” Sylvie said.

“Sorry.” He leaned down, and hesitated one last time. “Ready?”

“Just do it already.”

He sank his fangs into the deep red blood and drank, and it was ambrosia.
The taste for human blood is still in me,
he thought.
And this is the blood of the one I love.

Sylvie jerked once or twice as her human body resisted dying, but she never made a sound, and soon she was lying pale and ghostly in the moonlight that slanted through the windows of the motor home. She had never looked so beautiful. There was a sharp contrast between her black hair and white skin. Her brown eyes were growing dim.

Terrill waited by her side as the minutes passed. He was so absorbed in watching her that he was startled when someone pounded on the metal door. “What’s holding you up, Terrill?” Jamie shouted. “We’ve got to get moving if we’re going to get there tonight!”

Had it been an hour already? He looked down at Sylvie, but she hadn’t moved.
Strange,
he thought.
She should’ve revived a long time ago.

He heard the other cars and motor homes in the caravan starting up, so he climbed into the driver’s seat, and with one last troubled look back, led the way out of the park and onto the highway.

#

Terrill’s panic grew with every minute, with every mile.

Finally, a few hours later, as they reached the outskirts of Grants Pass in Southern Oregon, he couldn’t stand it any longer and pulled over to the side of the road.

Jamie pulled up behind him as he was scrambling out of the driver’s seat, and moments later, she swung open the motor home’s door and came inside. “The cops aren’t going to like this many cars on the side of the road, Terrill,” she warned. “Do we really want to call attention to ourselves?”

“It’s Sylvie!” he cried. She still hadn’t moved. Her eyes had the milky look of death.

“What do you mean?” Jamie said, rushing to his side.

“She wanted to be Turned.”

Jamie looked down at her little sister with wide eyes. “Oh, Sylvie. Why?” She whirled on Terrill. “Why’d you do this?”

“She asked me to!”

“And you just went ahead, you selfish bastard?” Jamie snapped. “Did you really believe that’s what she wanted? I’ve never seen a human as happily alive as Sylvie. And look what you’ve done to her!”

“I don’t understand why she hasn’t Turned,” he said, feeling calmer now that another person was screaming the same blame at him that he was feeling himself.
I deserve it,
he thought.
But I’ve got to fix it.

“If this was an old-style Turning,” Jamie said, also calming down a bit, “we wouldn’t be worried. That took days.”

“True,” he said.

“For all your vaunted powers, Terrill, you weren’t the vampire who started creating Wilderings,” Jamie said. “I was. Maybe, somehow, you don’t have the same strain of vampirism.”

“Shit,” Terrill said. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Still, he started to feel relieved. Then he remembered that only one in a hundred attempted Turnings by old-style vampires had been successful, and he started to panic again.

Jamie grabbed him by the arm. “Have a little faith, Terrill. We can’t have come all this way, have gone through so much, only to lose her now.”

He nodded, but found he otherwise couldn’t move.

“I’ll get someone to drive the rig and we’ll sit here with her, OK?” Jamie said kindly.

Again he nodded. He sat down at Sylvie’s side and gently brushed back her hair. “I’ll wait,” he said.

A couple of hours later, Terrill looked up to see that Robert Jurgenson was driving and they were passing into California.

Later, on one of the winding roads of the coastal mountains, he became aware of his surroundings again as red and blue lights flashed through the windows and a loud siren whooped. Jamie was driving now. Somewhere along the way, they must have stopped, and she had taken her lover’s place.

Terrill felt stiff, as if he hadn’t moved in hours. He had no idea where the time had gone. All he could remember was staring at Sylvie, willing her to move.