Seeker (36 page)

“You bitch,” Jimmy said in a voice so low that Lawrencia thought she had only imagined him speaking. But then he turned his head, and looked directly at her. Lawrencia froze. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he asked, his voice rising slightly.

Lawrencia gathered her wits, and was ready to tell him exactly whom she was when he lashed out, and she found herself back in the corner, a trickle of blood running from the cut just above her eye.

“You think you know me? You don't know shit,” Jimmy said, advancing on her. “You're mine. Curtis is mine.”

Lawrencia watched him approach, his free hand unbuckling his belt. He wasn't going to hit her with it, that much she knew. He was going to show her how much she was his to do with as he pleased. Her hand went to her belly, forever barren because of a previous demonstration of his control. Lawrencia closed her eyes, hating herself. Amy was wrong, she thought as she heard Jimmy popping the buttons on his jeans. There was no fighting, there was no escape.

She could only give in to the inevitable.

There was no escape. She knew that now.
Willem
, she thought, as a single tear rolled down her cheek.

* * *

It was as she had expected. She had her ways, and it didn't matter how many lives she lived they would always remain the same. Once the new identity was set up, she would retreat into herself, yet still maintain a periphery of awareness, subtly preparing for the time when she would awake again. Keeping an eye on her children, while all the time waiting for the right century to come about, when she would be reunited with her love.

This time had come. Her husband had returned, only he didn't know it yet.

Lily, a name she liked for her own personal reasons, reached into the back of the wardrobe and there she found it. She remembered buying it, forking out much more money than Lillian would ever have spent on a dress. But nonetheless Lillian still bought it, brought it home and stored it in the back of her wardrobe, and there it remained, forgotten about until Lily surfaced again.

She laid the dress on the bed and looked it over. It was of the finest white silk, straight and tailored perfectly for her body. There was little about it that would draw the eye, no silly frills, it was merely plain. But then Lily knew that her allure would not be a result of frills and spectacle, it came from a deeper well. She had always had a way with men, able to lure even the most ambivalent to her, and from her life as Lillian she knew the world into which she had awoken. Men were driven by their lusts more than ever. All would fall before her.

She turned from the dress and walked across the landing to the shower. It was time to freshen up. To take in the world with her own eyes, no more encumbered by the morality of the human identity she had built. She needed to prepare, for Sam would return to her, and when he did she would be ready for him.

* * *

Tracking Willem had been child's play, just as Frederick had expected. He had turned off into Ridgeway Gardens, heading past the green and up Hill Way. Frederick followed, passing by his own home, so focussed on Willem that he failed to notice his kitchen light on at the top of the house. Instead he carried on, up the tree-lined street, knowing full well that Willem was heading towards Chalkwell Park.

Frederick stopped outside the entrance on Old Leigh Road, and looked around. It was almost nine o'clock now, and on a Thursday night the road was mostly deserted, apart from the odd car heading to or from London Road at the far end of the park. As he jumped the fence, he was reminded of a similar event in another park barely a week earlier. He suspected this encounter would go better.

He landed on the path on the other side of the fence, and looked about the park. The park itself was in darkness, but for the lights of the buildings and streets surrounding the large park. In front of him, just past the field was a small wooden fence circling a small pond, to the left of which sat a small play area for children. Frederick could sense Willem in that direction, and for a moment he wasn't too sure, but then he saw him.

Back to Frederick, Willem was sitting on the wooden fence, his head lowered, body visibly shaking. Frederick smiled. It was time.

17.

“Willem.”

Still he shook. Frederick stood a few feet away, the pain from his healing stomach a reminder of the strength now wielded by Willem. The fledgling showed no sign of hearing Frederick whisper his name, but Frederick knew he heard. Willem was now upyr, and even though he had spent the best part of a week without the guidance of his maker, he still had their preternatural gifts, and that included enhanced hearing. Frederick put a hand on his stomach, testing the wound through the tear in his shirt, and stepped closer to the wooden fence. “I've been looking for you.”

“Now you've found me,” Willem pointed out, his voice also soft. Frederick smiled, glad to hear the anger gone. Willem still looked away, though, his head lowered. “What did you do to me?”

Frederick took a deep breath. There was much to explain. He could barely begin to understand how it must have been for Willem the past four days, living as an upyr but with no understanding of how or why, or indeed
what
, it meant for his life. Not wanting to risk damaging his healing stomach, Frederick walked around the fence. “I saved you,” he said, once he was near Willem.

“From what?”

Still Willem looked to the grass, and Frederick wondered if he was as clueless as he seemed. It was possible. His whole Rebirth was off key, and it was very possible that he had lost his memory as a result of the whole strangeness of it. It would explain why Willem had done nothing to find Frederick.

“You were dying, don't you remember?”

Willem swallowed and looked up. “We were mugged, right?”

“Yes, in the alley near Zinc.” Frederick offered a weak smile. “We went into the alley to…” He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you know.”

Willem smiled briefly, and looked away. “Yeah, I remember that. There were four of them…You took them on, and I…” He shook his head. “Well, one moment I was almost there, and the next I'm on the ground with some bastard cracking me in the ribs with his boots.”

“I took care of him,” Frederick said, and reached out for Willem. Will flinched, and Frederick pretended to not be bothered. But the rejection stung. “It was supposed to be a perfect night, the start of something amazing, but then I saw you on the ground and…”

“And you took care of them.” Willem was silent for a moment, before adding; “Then took care of
me
.”

The accusation was clear. “No, it wasn't like that. I didn't mean to…”

“Yeah, an accident. You said.” Willem looked up again, and fixed Frederick with his transparent eyes. “These are not normal, are they? I had brown eyes, but now…” He held his hands up, showing the drying blood on his fingertips from where his talons had ripped the skin open. “And these? What the fuck have you done to me, Frederick?”

“I saved you. You have to understand, Willem, you were dying. Things escalated and before I knew it you were there, and I…” Frederick lowered his head. There really was no excuse; he had been caught in the hunger, in a blood frenzy. And he had struck out blindly. But he had honestly never meant to hurt Willem. That was never his intention. “I'm sorry,” he said, beginning to hear a familiar ring to his tone. Not only were they the same words he had used with Celeste, but the truth behind them was just as real. “I'm sorry for how it happened, and for not finding you.”

“Did you really try and find me?”

“I did, tried everything, engaged all the contacts I knew that might be of help. I…” Frederick looked away, towards Chalkwell. “All this time you were so close, but I still couldn't feel you. I should have sensed you somehow. Should have tried harder. I'm sorry.”

“Are you? I mean, really? Do you even understand the meaning of the word, Frederick? 'Cause, you know, I've got to wonder.” Willem climbed off the fence and walked over to the pond. “Did I see what I thought I saw? You were lapping up the blood of those bastards, weren't you? Like some animal.”

Frederick watched him, but he didn't move himself. “Yes,” he replied, “you did see that. But we're not animals, what you witnessed was a rare instance. The blood hunger got the better of me, yes, but we're not animals.”

Willem glanced back, and the disgust on his face was clear. “We?” he repeated quietly, almost to himself. “Yes, I guess I'm one of you now. A vampire.”

“We're not vampires. We are
upyr
. Vampires are monsters of myth, of supernatural fiction. We're real, and we are not monsters. As I said, you saw an extreme case. Sometimes we can get caught up in feeding, and the hunger overwhelms us. This is why we don't usually drink from people; it's too dangerous for us.”

“Right, and not exactly a picnic for them, either.” Willem rubbed his throat. “You fed off me, too. I remember, after you ripped into my throat…” He stopped at the pond and looked over towards Frederick, but Willem was not looking
at
him. “You held me in your arms, and you kissed me, and then you drank…no, you sucked the blood out of my mouth.
Through
my tongue.” Willem had been talking to himself, so Frederick didn't interrupt. He was clearly remembering this for the first time, which went some way to explaining why he had not sought Frederick out. Until Frederick had turned up at that woman's house Willem hadn't remembered anything. “Why?” Willem asked, this time focussing on Frederick.

“Because you had lost much blood, you were dying,” Frederick replied, and began walking over to Willem.

“Trained doctor now, are you? You could have called an ambulance. I might have been okay.”

Frederick shook his head. “No, I couldn't. The human world mustn't intrude on ours. We have our own way of dealing with things, our own people to call in.”

“Your
own
people? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Before Frederick could answer, Willem waved it away. “It doesn't matter.” His eyes narrowed as a new thought come to him. “Why didn't you call these people? Instead of…”

“I panicked,” Frederick said, cutting in, his voice almost sounded desperate and he hated it. He began to draw closer to Willem, his steps small and measured. “I saw all the blood coming out of your throat from where I…”

“Ripped it open with those talons?” The sarcasm was laced with bitterness. Frederick couldn't blame him.

“Yes. I couldn't lose you, Willem; I had only just found you. I thought you were someone else, but I was wrong, the connection I felt with you, it was…real.” He was barely a foot away from Willem now. Frederick reached out. “From the moment I saw you I wanted you, and that night was going to be so special for us. I could not let you go.”

Willem said nothing; he just looked into Frederick's eyes. The anger seemed to be fading, replaced by a confusion Frederick understood all too well. He'd felt it himself enough over the last few days. He knew a way to prove what he said, to remove the confusion.

He leaned forward and kissed Willem full on the lips. At first Willem tensed, but then he took Frederick's head in his hands and parted Frederick's lips with his tongue.

Frederick knew this would happen. Others may have doubted him and his motives, but his reasons for following Willem's life, for waiting until he finally headed towards Southend as the Book had said he would, making sure Willem had been on that train, had been pure. He had truly believed Willem to be the Seeker, but when he'd seen him dying in the alley Frederick had known the truth. And from the moment Frederick had passed his own blood into Willem's he had known this moment would come to pass. That Willem and he would be together, just as Celeste had known the same of Frederick centuries ago when she had first laid eyes on him in Posen.

Willem pushed him away.

“What?” Frederick asked, barely a second before Willem's fist caught him clean on the jaw.

Frederick flew backwards and landed with a splash in the small pond. He lay there for a moment, overcome with both pain and surprise. His head felt like it had been knocked clear off his neck, but it hurt too much to be so. He looked over at Willem, who stood at the edge of the pond, his fists clenched, face contorted in disgust.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Willem growled.

Frederick struggled to his feet, keeping his eyes on Willem all the while, a task not made easy by the dizziness that was threatening to drop him back on his arse. “I was trying to…” He stopped, his own anger suddenly springing forth. “You kissed me back! What the hell is wrong with…?”

He was on his back again, winded by William's shoulder as the younger man cannonballed into him. Frederick struggled beneath Willem's weight, as he repositioned himself into a position of control. Fortunately the pond was so shallow that the water barely reached Frederick's ears, and so there was no fear of him drowning. Not that such a thing would kill him, of course, but now was not the time to slip into unconsciousness. So he stopped struggling, and allowed Willem to sit astride him, pinning him by the arms.

“Isn't this what you wanted?” Willem whispered, his voice a rumble of hate. He leaned down until his face was barely inches away. “You want to be inside me, right?” Willem squirmed on Frederick, pressing against Frederick's rapidly hardening member.

For a brief second Frederick closed his eyes, and let out a whisper. “Yes.”

Willem smiled, and moments later his tongue was in Frederick's mouth again. Frederick shook his head, pulling away from Willem's face as much as he could.

“No,” he said, “not here. Not now.”

Willem smiled again, but it was a smile of darkness, promising much in twisted pleasure. Frederick liked it. “Then where?”

“My place,” Frederick said, “it's not too far away.”

* * *

He sat on the arm of the chair, looking out of the window, down at the darkened street below. From his vantage point in the converted attic flat, he was higher than the trees that lined Hill Way, their dense leaves and branches concealing much of the street. It was early, and there was nothing to really see anyway. Cars parked up, the distant sounds of cats fighting and foxes wailing.

Willem
.

It was a name that Frederick had used a lot since he'd stormed into Lilly's home, a name Frederick had practically screamed when he had shot his load deep inside the man he thought of as Willem. It was the name of the man who owned the two bags sitting on the carpeted floor next to the chair, the contents of which were like a snapshot of Willem's life. But they, like the name, belonged to a different man.

Willem would never have done the things Sam had done since Frederick had found him in the park. Sam knew Willem better than anyone, and he knew Willem would be disgusted by Sam's actions. Willem was too vanilla; he played things too safe. For Willem dangerous was going to meet someone he had only previously known online.

Sam stood up. He could hear the wind outside; see the rain pounding against the glass. There was no heating on in the flat, but despite all that he wasn't even remotely cold, even though he walked the flat in all his naked glory. Clearly a benefit of being what Frederick had called an upyr.

Of course, strictly speaking, he had lived in this state for four days, although he hadn't known it. He had known something odd was going on with his body, but he had never truly bought Lilly's line about his eyes being some genetic defect. And then there was the way his musculature was developing without even the slightest workout. So much he needed to know.

Two things he knew for sure; he didn't crave blood at all (which was a relief, since just the memory of seeing Frederick lap up that blood in the alley turned his stomach), and his transparent eyes were a natural upyr thing, as he had found out when Frederick had removed his contacts and revealed his own translucent eyes.

That he had been turned into a vampire, or an upyr or whatever you wanted to call it, did not explain much. It didn't offer Sam any insights into the memories he had of Ancient Egypt, nor of being in a burning monastery in Moldavia, or why he had been seeing so many other scenes played over the real world events around him. Events and people; lives that could not possibly belong to one single person.

Since laying eyes on Frederick at Lilly's those scenes had faded away, as if his focus on Frederick had pushed them aside. He felt sure they would return soon enough.

There hadn't been much conversation between him and Frederick, though, since leaving the park, mostly small talk, innuendo and the like. Words pretty much went out of the window as soon as they had entered Frederick's top floor flat. Clothes were practically torn off as Frederick gave in to the passion, completely oblivious that Sam was merely going through the motions. Sex was a tool to use against someone like Frederick. He was so caught up in Willem, believing they were destined to be together, that Sam barely needed to lead him on. But when they got to the bedroom, it was Frederick who took the lead, taking Sam to places of sexual pleasures that Willem had never known existed. The end result had been messy, leaving the bed covers stained with blood, semen and wax, the “toys” discarded on the floor. He had to admit, to himself at least, he had a feeling he might have enjoyed it more than Frederick, especially when he discovered how easily his body healed. He wasn't sure if it was down to the changes brought on by being turned into an upyr, but his sexual prowess and stamina was something else, and the two of them had come to climax many times over.

Eventually, now spent, Frederick had fallen asleep, his naked body wrapped around Sam's. Sam had lain there for a while, before he disentangled himself from Frederick and crept out of the room. He needed time alone, away from the man who had altered his life so. He didn't know what Frederick had in mind for the two of them, but Sam was certain that whatever it was it would never come about.

He had a shower before entering the lounge, cleaning himself both of the dried mud from walking barefoot in the streets and park, and of Frederick's body.