Blood of Gold (8 page)

He saw someone approaching. The man hesitated, looking as though he wanted to cross the street, but then got ahold of his courage, hunched his shoulders and walked quickly past. Kelton put on his goofy smile, but instead of reassuring the stranger, it made the man grow pale, and he seemed to be holding back a shout.

Huh, I guess I’ve lost it,
Kelton thought.
Well, I always did wonder why the stupid grin worked.

#

Feller was lost. He was FBI: he’d always been FBI. Without his job, he was nothing, nobody. He was vampire, a scavenger feeding off society. He hated himself. Every morning, he fought the temptation to open the curtains and let the sunlight burn him out of existence.

That was the story he tried to tell himself, but he knew he was lying. In truth, he loved himself, loved being a vampire, and could care less about being an FBI agent. He went hunting every night and felt no qualms about it.

He awoke with the fall of darkness, as he did every night thanks to the internal clock that all vampires possessed. Instantly, he knew he was being hunted. They were trying to be quiet, in their clumsy human way. They were two floors down, working their way up the stairwell of the abandoned apartment building. Feller counted the footfalls. There were six of them, all young, judging by the vigorousness of their steps; all young men, and all armed, judging by the sound of confidence in their voices.

Feller thought about slipping away, then decided,
No, I’m hungry and I’m mad, and these young men need to be taught a final lesson.

Feller wasn’t exactly sure why he hadn’t left town. Everyone in Crescent City was on high alert. The entire surviving populace knew about vampires, and gangs of youth spent every night searching the shadowy corners for the creatures of darkness. The humans had the upper hand this time. They always had the upper hand when they were aware and vigilant, for they could move around by day and by night and always had superior numbers. One on one, vampires were more dangerous, but, armed with the latest weapons, modern humans would win in the end. It was simple math.

That was why vampires had always lurked in the shadows and caught their unsuspecting prey by surprise. As a vampire hunter, Feller had been opposed to acknowledging the existence of vampires, on the grounds that it would panic the public. Now he saw clearly that it had been simple turf-protecting on his part, self-serving, like most of his motives. He hadn’t really cared about vampires. Even the best vampire hunter usually confronted only a bare handful in a lifetime. No, the world of vampires had just been his turf to consolidate and expand.

One thing about being a vampire: you no longer harbored illusions. You saw life clearly, in all its brutal reality.

That’s why he was surprised by his own hesitance to leave the area. The farther he moved away from here, the more unsuspecting the humans would be. This was probably the most dangerous place on Earth for vampires, for not only was the citizenry up in arms, but possibly every professional vampire hunter in the world had descended on this one small coastal city in Northern California.

Perhaps it was the challenge. Killing the hunters, turning the tables. That took real skill.

As a former vampire hunter, Feller knew all the tricks. So far, he had managed to avoid any confrontations with humans who actually posed a danger. He was breaking his own rules tonight of never challenging more than three opponents at a time, but he was feeling good, feeling strong. All the burns had healed.

When Robert had opened the curtains in that death room, Feller had been caught flat-footed. He’d fled, but not before most of his skin and a lot of his flesh had burned away. He’d hidden in the rafters of the old motel until darkness had fallen, and then flopped to the floor and fled into the chaos and destruction outside. Even the other vampires had avoided him, a skeleton with red meat on it, eyes bulging from a bare skull, the bare bones of his feet slapping against the pavement.

He’d found a human, sniffed the little old woman out from hundreds of yards away, torn open the door of her small house and fallen on her. She had died with a resigned moan. She had only been enough to begin the healing. Many more humans had died before Feller was himself again.

As the gang of youths crept up the staircase to his floor, laughably loud to his heightened senses, he decided to remain where he was, hidden in a closet. They would check, of course. He was counting on it.

He heard them giggling and shushing each other. It had probably been days since they’d actually seen a vampire. They weren’t really expecting to find one; they were just reliving the glory of previous nights of hunting. When one of the young men opened the closet door, his eyes weren’t even focused. They were already moving away, on to the next thing. Then his head snapped back in a double take.

It was too late.

Feller fired his FBI-supplied Glock twice, the silencer muffling the shots. The kid fell limply to the floor, folding almost without a sound. One of his friends called out tentatively, “Sergi?” Feller fired in the direction of the voice, heard a thud, then walked out of the closet into the middle of the room. Only one of the remaining youths had a gun, and Feller fired into his head.

It was down to three opponents, the number he preferred to deal with.

He was on the first kid before any of the three could move, using his claws to rip into his neck. He left his victim standing, blood spurting out into the room, not yet aware he was dead.

One of the surviving hunters attacked Feller with a big Bowie knife. He almost caught the vampire by surprise with an overhand blow, but then the kid slipped on the blood-soaked floor and slid into Feller’s grasp. Reaching down, Feller took hold of his head and twisted it. The hunter’s neck snapped, but Feller kept twisting until his head came off. He rolled it toward the last hunter.

The lone survivor was running, as humans always did. Feller caught him at the top of the steps, bit into his neck and drank deep. This was the real prize: the warm red blood of a still-living human. When he was done, he’d go back and feast on the dead, but nothing could match the sheer exhilaration he felt at sucking the adrenalized blood of a terrorized teenager.

“Well done,” he heard a voice say.

Feller dropped the dead guy and reached for his gun.

“No need for that,” the voice admonished. Feller used his sharp night vision to scan the stairs, the hallways, the room behind him. There was nothing there. No, wait. There was a shadow, darkness where there should have been clarity. Feller could see into the darkest shadows, but he couldn’t penetrate this void.

A huge vampire walked out of the shadow; that is, he became visible, but the darkness accompanied him. His voice was low and neutral, yet not quite masculine. It was a voice that seemed to be made of many voices.

“What do you want?” Feller asked. He raised his Glock and considered firing. It wouldn’t kill the other vampire, but it might slow him down. Feller didn’t care that this new opponent was one of his own kind. He felt nothing toward other vampires and suspected they felt nothing toward him.

The hulking vampire gave him a big grin, or at least appeared to be trying to. It was a rictus, a death mask, and Feller, who thought he’d seen everything, felt a chill.

“My name is Kelton. I have been granted powers that most vampires don’t possess.”

“Good for you,” Feller said. “So what?”

“If you follow me, I will give you the power to walk in sunlight,” Kelton said.

Feller lowered his gun. This was what made being a vampire dangerous: humans merely needed to uncover them, just draw back the curtains, overturn the rock, and they would win, with all the daylight hours at their command. At night, the fight was equal, but unless vampires had time to prepare for the morning, they were always going to be vulnerable.

Even Feller, the former vampire hunter who knew all the tricks.

“You can do that?” he asked.

“Yes… but you must descend into a deeper darkness than ever you have known, from which there will be no return.”

“Let’s do it,” Feller laughed. “I have no desire to return to what I was.” He holstered his gun and opened his arms.

Moving with blinding speed, the other vampire scooped him up before he was quite ready, and Feller felt his neck being sliced by huge fangs. As a cold lassitude swept through his blood, he had a final thought:
I hope this wasn’t some sort of trick.

In his mind, he clearly heard the words “You have been chosen.”

Chapter 8

Rod sat in the dark and wondered if he should try to escape. The closet was big enough for him to lie down in, but he wasn’t sleepy. He felt an unexpected pity for these poor girls, especially once he figured out who they were. Everyone in Crescent City knew about two of the girls, how they had disappeared into thin air. Most thought them dead, or taken far away. The other girl, Laura, had been such a throwaway that no one had even missed her.

Rod wanted to help them.

Stockholm syndrome?
he wondered. He didn’t think so, but then, someone suffering from Stockholm syndrome probably wouldn’t, right?

The door opened, but he couldn’t see who was there. It was equally dark in the hallway. It freaked him out a little, how the girls could move around in the dark as if all the lights were on. Now, they usually only turned on the lights when he was there.

Someone slipped into the closet beside him.

“Laura?” he whispered.

“No,” he heard a husky voice say. “It’s Simone. I want to ask you some questions.”

He sat up, hitting his head on the shelf above him. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the sudden lump in his throat. “Sure.”

Ever since that first day, Rod had tried not to stare at her, but it was difficult. Simone was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, dark-haired and slender, without any guile in her face. He felt almost guilty being attracted to her, because she was like a young girl in demeanor… but she was all woman in form. Her low voice was unbelievably sexy. Her no-nonsense manner was immensely appealing, especially now that he knew what she had been through. It was her presence, more than anything else, that had kept him from trying to get away.

She started asking him questions about what had happened in the world since she’d been locked up. The events of 9/11 had occurred after she’d been kidnapped, so the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were news to her. She found the Arab Spring intriguing. The fact that America had a black president astounded her. Rod started to tell her about how far the Internet had come when he had a sudden inspiration.

“Here,” he said. “Let me show you.” He dug out his cellphone. The light from its screen lit up the inside of the closet. Simone’s face was only inches from his, close enough for him to smell the soap she’d used to clean her hair.
Close enough to kiss,
he thought. There was a gleam in her eye, as if she could read his intentions. They both moved back a little, as if mutually embarrassed.

“What is that?” Simone asked.

“It’s my cellphone,” he said. “I can get Internet service on it.”

“A phone?” she said. She reached out and grabbed it. “So small!” she marveled, turning it over and over in her hands. Then she sat and stared at him, still holding his phone. “Why didn’t you call for help?” she said finally.

Rod was embarrassed. Of course, he’d been thinking about it ever since he’d been locked in here, alone. The girls had seen the phone and examined it as if puzzled, but hadn’t seemed to understand what it was or what it could do. Smartphones and Wi-Fi hadn’t existed when they’d been kidnapped.

“I, uh… I’m not sure,” he stammered. “I want to help you.”

“Help us?” She sounded suspicious. “Why would you do that?”

“You don’t remember me, do you, Simone?”

She gave him a look, as if to say,
Obviously not.

“I was in Mrs. Hogner’s seventh-grade math class with you. I had a crush on you.”

She examined him, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember much about those days. School seems so… far away.”

“I still think you’re pretty cool,” he said.
God, that sounded lame.

She looked puzzled. “What about your wife and kids?”

“I lied.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d be less likely to kill me if I told you I had a family. I didn’t recognize you at first.”

Hearing this, Simone looked so sad that he couldn’t help himself: he reached out and put his palm on her cheek. She winced at first, then leaned into his caress. It wasn’t so much him, he sensed, as that she simply craved human contact. Her eyes started to well up, and he dared to take her in his arms and hug her.

After she had cried herself out, she leaned away from him and ran her hands across her eyes, wiping away the tears. “Do you really want to help?” she asked. Her voice was all business again.

“Anything,” Rod said. He meant it. All thoughts of escape had vanished.

“Go to the neighbors. Tell them you’ve rented this house. See if they’ll sell you any of their livestock, anything at all. My sisters… I mean, Laura and Patty… need some raw flesh to eat, or… or I’m not sure what will happen.”

“OK,” he said. “I have a little money in the car. I’ll see what I can do.”

Simone started to get up, then sat back down and took his hand. “If you can’t help us, then you must leave. I can’t be sure that we can control our hunger much longer. Promise me you won’t come back unless you can bring us some meat.”

He nodded. He noticed that she hadn’t asked him not to call the authorities. She trusted him, it was clear. She gave him back his phone and led him out of the closet. It was dawn, and a small amount of light had infiltrated the hallway. As they stood outside the door before joining the others, they turned to each other and hugged. Rod resisted the urge to try to kiss her, though he’d never wanted something so much in his whole life. She kept her head down during the hug, as if afraid he’d try it. When they broke apart, she gave him a grateful smile.