The Comanche Vampire (2 page)

Her
voice didn’t sound like any woman he’d heard speak before so he thought she
might be from a distant place.
 
He’d ignore
anyone else, but this woman tempted him and so he said, dredging up English
with difficulty, “I am Comanche.”

Laughter
poured from her mouth, pretty as moonlight and as tinkling as a small creek
over rocks.
 
“I thought so.
 
I’ve seen Comanche before.
 
Although I’m Romany, a gypsy woman, I lived
for a time in Texas.”

If
she’d seen Comanche warriors, then she should know how dangerous he could be.
His hand strayed to his belt, fingered his knife and he knew how easily he
could take her life.
 
It would be swift
and savage.
 
A part of him would glory in
the act, but her eyes mesmerized him, and held him captive.
 
Something about her hair, so wild and almost
wicked, intrigued him and drew him closer.
 
His restlessness shifted into something different, toward another way of
release and his cock hardened inside his buckskins.
 
He wouldn’t kill this one but he’d use her to
forget his pain, to steal a bit of sweetness to lighten the bitterness of his
life. She might be beautiful, but she deserved nothing more.

He
hadn’t used a woman for pleasure in a long time. The last one he’d loved had
been his wife.
 
Pea’hocso
remembered his wife’s soft skin, her scent, and her strong legs wrapped tight
around his.
 
A flood of want swamped him
and he grasped the Romany woman into a harsh embrace. Without thought, without
courtesy and for no reason but to vent physical release he took her mouth and
owned it.
 
He kissed her with harsh
abandon, his lips ground hard against hers.
 
He hoped she’d struggle.
 
He
wanted her to fight or to fear, but she didn’t.

No,
this one gave back the fire he lit and burned him.
 
She didn’t struggle against his arms but
gripped him with hot hands so tightly it hurt.
 
The woman used her tongue to enter his mouth as she mimicked sex with
rapid in and out motions.
 

Pea’hocso
yielded and stood without
protest, more used than user now.
 
Her
heated lips seared his mouth and left it to trail down his throat.
 
She sucked and nibbled and kissed her way
down to the left side of his neck.
 
He
felt her powerful need in his blood and the strength of it hastened his heart like
a drum.
 
He stopped thinking, forgot
where he stood and why as he got lost in the passion.
 
Pleasure surrounded him and he sank into it,
mindless and heedless.

He
drifted until she bit him, hard and fast.
 
Her teeth punctured his skin and pain exploded outward.
 
The woman latched to him like a snapping
turtle and as he thrashed in an effort to break contact, he found he couldn’t
work free.
 
Something warm and liquid
flowed down his throat and
Pea’hocso
smelled the
sharp, familiar scent of blood.
 
She bit
again, another spot and then a third.
 
Each hurt with sharp pain.
 
His
head whirled and he weakened. He no longer enjoyed the encounter and when he
heard the unmistakable sound of sucking, he realized she drank from him.
 
With fear and sick horror, he knew what she
was.
 
There were many names for such
creatures, things of darkness who hunted human prey.
 
He’d heard a white man call them ‘vampires’
but
Pea’hocso
remembered stories from other tribes
who talked about Two Faces and a few wandering Navajo who spoke of skin
walkers.
 
The name didn’t matter, not
now.
 
All were evil and delivered
consequences.

Whatever
they were, he hoped death came first.

The
sole thing worse than surrender, defeat, humiliation, and the end of the Comanche
world would be to live.
 
Pea’hocso
chanted his death song, using old words. Some, so
ancient he didn’t even know the full meaning.
 
He prayed for an end but when the woman raised her blood-smeared mouth
from his throat, she laughed.

“You
are cursed,” she told him in her odd accent. “Your kind, Comanche, killed my
family in a raid.
 
And I did not die, but
became what I am, a vampire.
 
You will
live forever by night and have all eternity to pay for what you did as a
warrior.
 
If you walk by day, you will
look sick but when dark falls, you will become strong and seek blood.
 
Who you bite thrice will become what you are.
And you’ll live to the end of time.”

She
laughed then, with a terrible and crazy sound both witch-wild and eerie.
 
She slipped away into the shadows and
although he heard her footsteps,
Pea’hocso
couldn’t
see the woman.

He
lifted a shaking hand and touched the blood streaming from three wounds.

An
hour ago, he would’ve thought things could never be worse, but now, his life was
beyond imagining.
  

By
the time he sought the company of the others, the bites healed of their own
accord.
 
He tried to bring death.
 
Pea’hocso
stabbed
his knife deep into his heart and pain followed.
 
Blood rushed from him in a river and he sank
into black nothing.
 
Death came to meet
him but retreated. Everything reversed and within an hour, he stood in his
bloodstained shirt, not living, not departed but undead.

Forever.

Chapter One

Lawton, Oklahoma

Present Day

The
narrow track led away from the two-lane blacktop and snaked its way across the
Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge.
 
If there hadn’t been a sun-faded, much-dented mailbox on a crooked post
with hard to read letters spelling out his name, ‘Ned Big Eagle’, no one would
guess it was a driveway.
 
Ned preferred
it this way.
 
He didn’t want visitors and
few people came to his humble home.
 
He
could count how many had entered his place over the past century without
running out of fingers. Privacy mattered to Ned and he liked his solitary life.
Living on the edge of what he considered some of the last bits of unspoiled
prairie and a place where the buffalo still roamed pleased him too.
 
From his front door he could gaze out across
the open country and view some of the mountains.
 
Although he seldom saw the buffalo herd
grazing, he knew trails and paths, which led to their location.
 
If he tasted loneliness, he never complained.
But he wasn’t a recluse.
 
He went out
almost daily into the bustling world of Lawton, Oklahoma.
 
At times he ventured during daylight hours,
but most of the time he waited for darkness, to move among people.

Ned
sat on the front step of his house and watched the sun slide down the western
sky.
 
The vivid blaze of orange tempered
with purple shadows soothed him and the beauty bridged his early life with the
present.
 
He’d watched many sunsets out
on the open plains long ago and they remained one of few things that hadn’t
changed over time.
 
He named Mount
Sheridan and some of the smaller mountains in his mind and then sighed.
 
He crushed out his unfiltered cigarette, one
of his few vices, but it didn’t matter. Health risks didn’t matter for someone
immortal.
 
Ned headed in and changed into
his black jeans and the long-sleeved white dress shirt required for work.
 
He donned his tie and nametag, tamed his long
hair into a single braid, then filled his pockets.
 
He strolled outside and climbed into his old
pickup.
 
On the way into Lawton he
reflected on his existence and his mundane job at one of the Comanche nation
casinos.
 
As a dealer, he interacted with
the public nightly.
 
He didn’t enjoy the
work or hate it.
 
Like many other things,
his job existed.

En
route, he stopped for a burger.
 
A
carnivore at heart, Ned adapted to the white man’s food with effort.
 
In the beginning, much of what they ate
sickened him but he learned what he could eat, what he tolerated and what he
liked.
 
He preferred meat, above all else:
buffalo if he could get it, and beef as a close second.
 
Ned ate pork on occasion, but he refused to
eat chicken or any other poultry.
 
He
didn’t know if he liked the taste or not, but
Comanches
never ate birds.
 
They were weak and
foolish, nothing a warrior wanted in his mouth or belly.
 
Steaks ranked at the top of Ned’s favorites
but he’d come to enjoy a good hamburger too.
 
Dressed with lettuce, onion, tomatoes, and pickles, a burger provided
about all the vegetables he ever ate.
 

Seated
inside What-A-Burger at a booth, he relished the thick burger.
 
He didn’t need to eat, but sometimes he liked
to for the taste.
 
As he finished the
meal, he tossed his trash.
 
I’ll need blood, soon.
 
Probably tonight, or tomorrow at the latest
but I’ve
gotta
have some.
 
If lack of blood would destroy him, Ned
would endure whatever torment necessary … but it wouldn’t.
 
He’d wither and waste away but he wouldn’t
die. He knew because he’d tried. Unlike some of the few vampires he’d come
across over the last hundred-plus years, Ned didn’t like blood.
 
He didn’t enjoy the hunt because there was no
sport.
 
Humans made it far too easy.
 
So he drank when necessary, once or twice a
week and kept it to a minimum.
 
His job
at the casino made it simple to find prey.
 
Someone was stumbling around at any hour, and approaching them proved to
be effortless.
 
Most never knew what
happened, and he’d never taken more than the minimum necessary.
 
Ned made a vow when he first became a vampire
he wouldn’t inflict his endless torment on anyone else and he hadn’t.
 
He took care not to bite any individual three
times. His outstanding memory made it possible.
 

He
reported to work, clocked in and headed to the tables.
 
Mindy, a bright-eyed, fresh-faced blonde
grinned as he approached.
 
“Hi, Ned. I’m
ready to go if you’re ready to take over for me.”

“Sure,”
he replied.
 
He tried to keep contact
with his co-workers friendly but at arm’s length.
 
Over the long decades, he’d made a few
friends but none lasted more than ten or twelve years.
 
When they aged and he remained the same,
questions followed, ones he’d rather not answer.
 
Lying came hard to his tongue.
 
“How’s it been tonight?”

“Busy
for a Wednesday,” she told him. “How are you doing?”

“I’m
good.” Learning the polite responses kept him challenged because they changed
with each generation.
 
“Everything going
all right? How’s your daughter?”

“Peyton’s
great.
 
She just started 4-H and loves
it.
 
After I pick her up from the
babysitter I promised I’d take her out to get some chicken nuggets.”

“Have
a good evening.” Ned turned to the table but Mindy lingered.
 
She let her fingers trail down his arm and
leaned too close.
 
Her admiration for him
was obvious, but he ignored it.
 
Getting
involved with a woman would be a disaster larger than a tornado, more damaging
than a prairie fire.
 
A woman, the Romany
gypsy he’d never seen again, destroyed his shattered life and turned him into a
monster.
 
He’d met a few rare ladies he
would’ve liked to know better, but Ned always walked away.
 
If he ever met one who mattered, how could he
explain his undead status? It’d be impossible, and he had nothing to offer but
trouble.
 
Ned looked, but seldom touched
and when the need reared up within his body, he indulged in sexual pleasures,
but for the physical release alone.
 

He
sometimes craved companionship and longed once in a while for what he’d shared
with Aiyana,
but Ned knew such things
were out of his reach.
 
If he dreamed of
a woman in his simple home or imagined sitting across the table from a pair of
beautiful eyes who drank him with their gaze, he reminded himself he couldn’t
have either.