The Comanche Vampire (18 page)

“Very.”

Good
thing someone could be. “Feel any better?”

“A
little bit. How’s your head?”

For
a moment, he had no notion what she was talking about, then remembered how he’d
felt before he took the blood.
 
“Aw, it’s
fine.
 
I about forgot about it, with
everything else and you not feeling so hot.”

Anne
didn’t respond for a long minute.
 
Maybe
he shouldn’t have reminded her about ‘everything else’.
 
“Ned?” she said after the silence. “Would you
tell me a story about
Pea’hocso
?”

What
in the hell? He’d told her he
was
a
vampire as well as
Pea’hocso
.
 
She refused to accept either and didn’t want
to talk about the subject. Now she wanted to hear a tale? With a dick so stiff,
the damn thing hurt, Ned wasn’t much into telling stories. He opened his mouth
to refuse and then realized it might take his mind over his overwhelming
desire. “Sure, if you want.
 
What do you
want to hear about?”

“You
were told stories handed down, right?”

“Uh,
yeah, pretty close.”

“So
tell me about what it must’ve been like to be a wild Comanche warrior.
 
I’ve studied it, I teach it, but the reality
escapes me.
 
I’ve watched you and I’ve
learned so much more about how it would’ve been, but will you tell me?”

“All
right, sure.” Ned thought back to the long ago, when he remained human and
free. “I’ll tell you about a buffalo hunt, about the
ta’siwoo
. Will that work?”

“It’s
perfect.”

“You
teach this so you probably know most of this…”

“Tell
me anyway.”

“Okay.”
Ned gathered his memories, collected his thoughts, and began. Because he tended
to think in Comanche, especially when he recalled the past, Ned spoke the way
he recalled the elders had when they told stories and used a more formal
cadence. “At the time before everything turned bad and the white men took over
everything, the buffalo provided almost everything to the people.
 
We, uh, they ate their meat, used their hides
and robes to keep warm and for our lodges.
 
The bones became knives or scrapers.
 
There wasn’t any part of the animal that wasn’t put to use.
 
A good buffalo hunt made the difference
between going hungry and having plenty so it could mean life or death.
 
One autumn, winter came early and the people
weren’t prepared.
 
Scouts went out,
Pea’hocso
with them to find the herd but they came back and
hadn’t seen a single animal. They searched for three more days but found
nothing.”

“By
then,
Pea’hocso’s
children cried with hunger and his
wife, carrying another baby within her belly, lay on her buffalo hide and said
little.
 
So the people decided they must
hold a
Ta’siwoonubka
.”

“That’s
the buffalo dance, isn’t it? Sometimes called ‘the horn dance’ too?”

“Yes,”
Ned said. Her question interrupted his flow, but he caught his breath and began
again. “They gathered at the central fire and divided up, men and women.
 
The dancers came from different sides to
join.
 
Usually there were eight drummers
and singers who set the rhythms.
 
At
first the drum beat slowly, then the music stopped.
 
People whooped and shouted, then the drums
increased.
 
Everyone went to the center,
by the fire and then they danced back.
 
The head man dancer sometimes would tap the ones watching and they had
to dance too.
 
Then they’d sing to call
the buffalo.
 
So this time, the people
did the dance and then slept.
 
And
Pea’hocso
dreamed of the buffalo herd.
 
He saw it spread over the grasses and knew
where they’d find them.
 
In the morning,
he rode out with the other warriors to hunt but when they wanted to go west, he
insisted they turn south of the Red River.
 
Pea’hocso
rode out
ahead of the rest of the party to scout buffalo. And he found the herd just as
in his dream.”

He remembered it so well, even
after more than a century. Frost rimmed the ground as he rode his horse over
the open country.
 
He called his paint
stallion
Sarii
or ‘Dog’ because the animal’s back was
as speckled as a pup.
 
It’d been so cold
the blue sky loomed above, deeper and brighter than usual.
 
A few clouds drifted over the sun’s face and
cast running shadows across the ground.
 
Pea’hocso
caught the scent of the herd more than a mile
away.
 
He recognized the gamey, thick
smell, unique to
tasiwoo
and wanted to whoop with
delight.
 
He didn’t, though.
 
Sound carried and he could spook the
creatures.
 
Instead, he sat astride
Sarii
and waited.

Even now, so long afterward, he
hadn’t forgotten the magnificent sight of thousands of wooly buffalo grazing
from one edge of the horizon to the other.
 
Although he’d seen them before, many times, he would remember because
this was the last time
Pea’hocso
saw such
numbers.
 
After this hunt, the white
settlers encroached deeper into Comanche country and the blue-coated soldiers
followed.
 
So did the Texas Rangers, a
group of white men, many no more than boys, who followed the
Comanches
to make war.
 
None of the newcomers were like the first whites
Pea’hocso
saw.
 
They’d been seasoned plainsmen and
traders, men who knew the country almost as well as the people, the Comanche.
 
The ones arriving weren’t prepared.
 
They had no clue about the land or the weather,
the snakes or the storms.
 
But they were
united in hating the people who’d been here forever.

But on the day he recalled, the
white people, the list makers, were far from his thoughts.
 
Pea’hocso
watched
the herd with quiet pleasure.
 
His family
would eat through the winter and be warm.
 
When the others caught up to him, they paused as he did to savor the
majesty of the great animals, then they rode into the midst of them.
 
Buffalo scattered as the wild warriors chased
them.
 
Pea’hocso
chose a magnificent animal, a bull.
 
He
fancied the meat, but wanted the massive head to make a buffalo horned
headdress.
 
Such were few and often
reserved for leaders and shamans but if he could take down this animal, he
would claim it.

Without fear, with daring and
skill,
Pea’hocso
chased the bull away from the rest
of the herd.
 
He rode it down and came in
close. He fired a rapid series of arrows from his bow and his aim proved deadly
and he brought down the buffalo with an arrow through the heart, another
through the lung.
 
It ran farther before
it slowed, then stopped and dropped to the ground.
 
Whooping and shouting,
Pea’hocso
claimed it and when they returned to the village, they brought plenty of meat,
hides, and more.

He ended up with the horned
headdress he’d wanted, too. The leaders granted it to him for his courage and
cunning. Aiyana made beadwork to decorate the forehead of the buffalo as it
became headgear and
Pea’hocso
attached a pair of
eagle feathers, one on either side of the bonnet. He wore it on special occasions
but when he did, he could feel the power of the animal.

Ned
told the story and relived it.
 
Anne
didn’t interrupt and he thought she listened with an avid ear.
 
When he finished, he wished he still had the
headdress and said so, without thinking. “Too bad I still don’t have it,” he
said. “It’d be something worth keeping.”

Until
Anne stirred, her body warm against his, he’d almost forgotten his desire.
 
It surged back with force as a light laugh
shook her. “Thank you, Ned. You made it sound like you were there.
 
You tell a good story and now I’m so sleepy.”

Emotions
raw from remembrance, Ned adjusted his position so he could rub her back with a
gentle motion.
 
“I was,” he said, voice
quiet. “I was there.”

Anne
exhaled as her breathing shifted into sleep mode.
 
When she failed to respond, he realized she
hadn’t heard what she said.
 
He didn’t
move, but held her into the night, remained in position until his limbs grew
stiff as he remembered his long ago.
 
He
missed those times but he liked the present well enough and loved Anne.

If
he weren’t a vampire, things would be as close to perfect as he’d ever known
them.

Chapter Nine

Ned
predicted a cold, snowy winter season. The signs were all present, thicker
coats on fur bearing animals, cloud patterns, a heavy crop of nuts and when
he’d cut through the skin of a ripe persimmon, he found a spoon, not a
fork.
 
All were signs of a hard winter
coming.
  
But Anne had laughed at him.
 
“I think I’ll listen to the meteorologists on
television,” she told Ned. “They’re calling for unseasonably warm weather.” After
the blood drive, however, the weather turned chill and nasty.
 

Between
the end of autumn and the first day of winter, snow, sleet, and freezing rain
fell at various times over the Lawton area.
 
On days when temperatures climbed out of the thirties, downpours
drenched the region.
 
Every night at the
casino, Ned listened to the cacophony of sneezing, hacking, and sniffing.
 
Almost everyone else came down with a cold,
the flu, or suffered sinus trouble.
 
Gary
missed three nights, sick with bronchitis and returned still croupy.
 
Since Ned never fell ill, he worked a lot of
extra shifts, but in mid-December he decided to call in sick.
 
He wasn’t, but the clouds moving in from the
west were pregnant with snow and his bones told him it’d be a major blizzard.
 
Ned planned to hunker down and wait out the
storm but he needed two things first: some blood, and Anne.

When
he got off work, around six on Friday morning, Ned noted the storm front to the
west.
 
Battleship gray, it appeared as
tall as a mountain range, the clouds heavy laden.
 
A rising wind rifled his hair and he sniffed,
certain he could smell the coming snow.
 
Ned scanned the parking lots, almost empty at the early hour and spotted
a lone woman walking with hurried steps to her vehicle.
 
He trailed her and caught up as she fumbled
to unlock her Bronco.

“Ma’am?”
he asked as he plastered a faux smile across his face.

She
whirled, the keys caught between the fingers of her right hand.
 
He’d seen the pose before, one meant to
provide self-defense.
 
“Yes?”

Ned
assessed her.
 
Medium-height, ash blonde
hair, green eyes, and enough lines in her face he pegged her age as late
forties.
 
If he didn’t spook her, their
encounter would be brief. “I work here and I think you might’ve dropped this.”

He
dangled a player’s club card on a lanyard from one hand.
 
She peered at it then pawed at her neck.
 
Her fingers grasped a red cord and she pulled
up her card. “No, no, I’ve got mine.”

“Let
me see,” Ned said. His gaze intersected hers and locked.
 
He leaned forward to inspect the thin plastic
square and brushed her hair back from her throat.
 
“I think it’s tangled.”

When
she bent forward, pawing to get free, Ned nailed the traditional spot on her
neck.
 
He’d learned to drink with such
finesse most of his donors never noticed and this one didn’t.
 
Within a few moments, he’d taken his fill and
straightened her lanyard.
 
“Okay,” he
said.

For
the first time since he’d approached, she smiled, her edginess vanished.
“Thanks, anyway,” she said. “And be careful. It sure looks like snow.”

“I
will,” he promised.
 
He headed for Anne’s
apartment and by the time he parked, the first snowflakes sifted like powdered
sugar over everything.
 
A sharp wind blew
with enough force to make the bare bushes on either side of the building’s
entrance rattle with a skeletal sound.
 
Ned used the key Anne had given him to enter and discovered her still
asleep.