H.T. Night's 8-Book Vampire Box Set (133 page)

“Next time,” Parker said, “don’t get perfect
scores on your history tests. Not that there’s going to be a next
time.”

Then Erasmus raised the thing he’d been
holding, and I could see it was a beautifully crafted,
silver-tipped wooden stake, the gilded handle beset with jewels.
Somebody had put a lot of craft into making the stake, and the wood
was darkened with age and—

Something that might have been the blood of
all the victims who had gone before me.

They were going to kill me, and I couldn’t
do a thing about it. “I threw in that bit about the drained body
just to make sure,” Parker said, her words coming to me as if
through a wall of gauze. “A normal person would have said, ‘What do
you think did it, a vampire?’ But you didn’t even joke about
it.”

“A dead girl’s no laughing matter,” I
said.

“Neither is a dead cult member in the
basement,” Erasmus said. To Parker, he said, “Sometimes I suspect
you have clairvoyant powers in addition to possession and
shapeshifting.”

“The hero thing,” she said. “All we had to
do was have ‘Lilith’ send Hero Boy to the rescue, and somebody was
going to get hurt. Since we didn’t know which guy he’d hit, we had
them all contaminated with garlic and a bellyful of holy water. No
problem to them, except for their bad breath, but you couldn’t
resist the impulse to feed. Funny that your undead hunger is going
to lead to your second death.”

Garlic and holy water. And I’d drunk from
the neck of one of them. That’s what had hit me—vampire kryptonite.
A couple of the cult members grabbed me on each side, and I tried
to fight them off, but I was as weak as an anemic kitten. I looked
at them to discover they were teen girls, pretty frail themselves.
My self-esteem took a big nosedive.

They guided me to the chair and sat me down,
and my head was so heavy I could barely hold it up. Then it flopped
backward and I found myself staring way up at the ugly stone face
of the demoness.

I was starting to figure it all out. It
wasn’t Lilith they’d wanted for the sacrifice.

It was me.

“This is a big honor, Spider,” Parker said.
“You could have gone on forever, hiding away, moving from place to
place, surviving on stolen blood. And it would have been a
meaningless existence. This way, you get to be part of something
bigger.”

Erasmus moved in from the left, holding the
wooden stake in a ceremonial position, while Parker moved in from
the other side, with a crystal chalice in her hand.

“This way,” Parker said, “you get to
serve.”

I wasn’t Catholic by any means, but I
guessed the intent. Erasmus would jab his fancy stick in me, Parker
would collect my blood, and as I died for the second time, the
crowd would pass around the chalice and share a sip. I didn’t know
what would happen then. Maybe they expected it would make them live
forever.

Or maybe it would give their chants enough
power to bring that big stone bitch to life.

I imagined it stomping down the main street
in the town where I’d had my last Virgin Mary, probably with Parker
inhabiting the stone and serving as the creature’s heart and soul
and mind. Parker’s evils and sociopathic soul in an immortal,
invincible body.

Holy shit, the trouble she could cause.

And all I could do was sit on my ass while
the world ended.

Chapter Twenty-three

At least, that’s what I wanted them to
think.

Truth was, I had very few options. In the
past, most of their vampire victims had no doubt been rendered
nearly catatonic thanks to the holy water/garlic cocktail of
blood.

Trust me, I was almost there, too, but I
doubted they had faced a vampire as old as me—and as versed in,
well, being a vampire. You see, being a vampire doesn’t come with a
handbook, and for the most part, no one shows you the way.

You just get by, feeling your way through
your new undead life night after night, year after year, decade
after decade, figuring it out as you go.

Well, I’ve figured out a few things in my
time. And time is just what you need to figure some of this stuff
out, too. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is great entertainment, and I had
read it with interest back in the day. Although I was amused at all
the inaccuracies, the man did get a few things right, and one of
them would prove helpful now if I could just summon enough
strength.

That was a big if.

As the two girls held my arms down, it was
all I could do to keep my head from lolling forward. Through my
blurred vision, I could see Parker grinning. For that matter, I
could see Erasmus grinning, too. No doubt everyone was grinning at
the idiot vampire on stage.

Did all these girls know what was truly
about to go down? I doubted it. More than likely they thought this
was part of the show. A ritualistic interpretation of a sacrifice,
like what had happened with “Lilith” earlier when Erasmus snipped a
lock of her hair. Little did they know that a real vampire was
meant to die tonight. And if they did know, they were too bombed
out of their brains to do much about it—or even remember.

Plus, all those teenybopper Twilight fans
aside, most people prefer their vampires with a stake in the
chest.

Erasmus stepped before me. Apparently, he
was going to do the honors. Parker stepped to the other side. Her
eyes, I saw, were unnaturally big. Too big to be human.

I’d really stepped in it this time.

Did I really think the stone statue would
come alive behind me? I didn’t know. I suppose when you’re dealing
with demons anything could happen.

Did I think that Parker had a crazy
bloodlust that made my own seem tame? Yeah, I did. I’ve seen a few
demons in my time, and their agenda is always the same: create
havoc, destroy lives, gorge on humanity. Not necessarily in that
order. Their power is also misleading. They promise the world,
when, in fact, all they can do is create trouble.

I thought I heard a slow drum beating
somewhere, until I realized it was my own heartbeat thumping
steadily in my ears. It was my sluggish warning system reminding me
that something bad was about to happen.

Ya think?

It was then that Erasmus raised the
bejeweled stake high overhead. Parker lowered her head, her lips
brushing my ears. “Bye-bye, Spidey. It was fun knowing you.”

Erasmus spun the stake in his hand,
reversing his grip, and plunged it down into my chest—and he
couldn’t have been more surprised when his hand went through my
chest. All the way through and out the back. He stumbled when he
was met with no resistance...and would have stumbled into me,
except he stepped right through me.

The crowd gasped. Parker drew back,
furious.

You see, Bram Stoker’s Dracula had gotten a
few things right, and one of them was this: vampires—or at least
some vampires—can turn into something other than monstrous
bats.

We can turn into mist.

Or a semblance of mist. Indeed, I still
looked like me, unless you looked closely enough. If you looked
closely enough, you might rub your eyes and wonder if you were
seeing things. No doubt you would see through me.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to make the
change; luckily, turning into mist is a nearly effortless
transformation, requiring little energy.

And, after all, my very “life” depended on
it.

As Parker raged on the stage, grabbing the
stake from Erasmus and swinging at me wildly, her arms passing
through me harmlessly, I used the last of my energy and rose up
from the stage, up into the wind, which I rode into the highest
trees.

In this state, crazy as it might seem to
mortals, I can’t truly see or hear. I can only feel and sense. It’s
a very base existence, very elemental, like wind without the earth
and fire.

And it was from this state of being, as I
hovered near the tallest trees, that I gathered my strength.
Vampires are supernatural creatures, and the holy water and garlic
has a supernatural effect on us. Even in this elemental state, I
could still feel it in me, still feel its tainted effects.

And so I hovered and waited.

Waited for my strength to return.

Chapter Twenty-four

It was a stalemate at that point.

Erasmus and his band of drugged-up merry
pranksters couldn’t reach me, and one of his security goons even
fired a couple of bullets at me before realizing I was immune. All
I felt was a cool breeze as the bullets whistled through me.

On the other hand, I wasn’t doing so hot at
keeping my mist together, being contaminated with the garlic and
holy water as I was. I was starting to seep out a little, and part
of me felt like just letting go, letting my undead spirit scatter
across the atmosphere and go back to nothingness. It might be the
final peace that had eluded me for decades.

But, even though I wasn’t alive, I had a
deep, intense urge to survive. It was a thirst of a different kind,
but connected with the very act of drinking blood. Draining the
fluid of the living was in some ways a mockery of existence, but
wasn’t my existence just as valid as that of my victims?

Yes, I wanted to survive.

But even deeper than that, I wanted
vengeance.

Up in the tree, I was nearly at head level
with the stone demon statue, and I could see where unknown
sculptors had hewed out that brutish face and chipped, shadowy
eyes.

Okay, you ugly hunk of cold bitch. I don’t
have a body and you don’t have a soul. Maybe we can make some
beautiful music together.

Below, some of the disciples in robes were
emerging from their stupors enough to figure out something really
freaky was going on. A few headed for the safety of the surrounding
buildings, and even one of those muscle-headed security guards took
off running like a kid who’d heard a graveyard owl.

Erasmus and Parker weren’t running, though.
They were standing near the base of the tree, Parker waving the
stake while her “father” screamed at her, obviously blaming her for
bringing him a vampire that didn’t just lie down and die like the
others.

I wondered how many vampires had fallen prey
before my turn. Maybe I was the unlucky seventh or something, the
one that would bring the statue to lurching, lumbering life and
open the way for Parker to possess it.

I was looking down at Parker, who seemed to
be shapeshifting a little, because her fingers grew long talons and
her teeth stretched an inch or two longer, which made her wicked
grin all the more sickening.

She stuffed the stake in her mouth, like a
pirate about to climb a mizzenmast, and drove her claws into the
trunk of the tree. She skittered up a few feet and hugged the trunk
with her lithe legs, bracing herself so she could once again reach
up and sink her spiky fingers into wood.

She apparently planned to climb up to me and
wait for me to incorporate, at which time she would finish her
sacrificial slaughter.

Which meant I had to get my act together and
fast.

I glanced over at the statue once more, and
I could have sworn I saw the bitch twitch.

Has to be the moon, bouncing off Mount
Shasta and playing tricks with the shadows.

Hell, I believed in vampires and I believed
in demons, so an animated statue wasn’t much of a leap. A few
shrieks, screams and whimpers arose from below, as more of the
robed females came to their senses enough to understand the
Cloudland scene had taken a bad turn.

And it was then that my head, which was
already feeling foggy, seemed to get even lighter. The statue
turned toward me with a rumbling and grinding, but I also realized
I was turning to look at it at the same time.

Holy shit.

As an experiment, I slowly lifted my head
and looked up at the moon, and the statue did the same, a few bits
of gravel tumbling twenty feet down to the ground during the
motion.

I raised one hand, which was made more of
vapor than flesh. The statue trembled and then the arm moved away
from the body, and the tree shook with the vibration that rippled
across the compound like an earthquake.

By then, almost all the Cloudland disciples
had been scared straight, and they fled along with the security
guards. But Erasmus still held his ground, making me wonder if he’d
seen the stone beast move before.

Probably. After all, he’d set up this
sacrifice for a reason.

Parker was glaring as she scuttled up the
tree trunk, and now she was only fifteen feet below me, meaning I
had to make a decision soon. I was still groggy and weak, and I
couldn’t hold myself together as a mist much longer. And that meant
I’d become solid again while I was at my most vulnerable, probably
about the same time Parker reached me with her evil little
stake.

I figured you only got to play Barbie Doll
with a twenty-five-foot statue once every blue moon, so I stretched
my arm up and watched the statue lift its crude, stubby arm. I
reached straight out away from me and clutched at the air as if I
were trying to snag a mosquito and steal its stolen blood.

The statue repeated my motion with its blunt
stone hand.

I focused and visualized Parker scrambling
up the tree below me, and I edged my hand forward to snatch her up
in my imagination.

I felt the tree shake and looked down,
expecting a piece of the stone to have broken free and plummeted to
the ground. Instead, the big gray hand held Parker pinned against
the rough bark. She hissed and cursed, stabbing at the stone with
her stake.

I felt tiny little pinpricks against the
back of my hand.

“I hate you, Spider,” she grunted.

“Bet you say that to all the vampires,” I
said, but my voice was kind of weak. My snappy comeback was a
little lame, too.