Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (31 page)

And it was that thought alone that allowed
him to fall asleep with a smile on his face.

We understand
completely the problems we are causing. We see the front pages of
the newspapers floating in the wind and clogging up the gutters. We
can feel how our very presence here interrupts the city’s soul,
makes it quiver, forces it to speak to itself in terrified
whispers. It is not our wish to do this, but it is an unavoidable
side effect of what we must do to survive. We think on this,
discuss it amongst ourselves, as another night comes and descends
with little more than the hiss of the wind on a building on a hill,
quiet, still, but not quite pleasant. It is a place where the
people of the city unceremoniously dump those that it has no more
need for. It tries to say that it is giving this building’s
residents dignity and respect, but we know better.

We stand outside the front doors of the
nursing home, in plain sight but not seen by anyone. The only ones
who could see us now, if they were present, would be the fruit of
the garden. As we stand, waiting for the ebb and flow of all we
feel around us to tell us who we shall visit, we cannot help but
reflect on the odd nature of both the garden and the gardener that
we have found within this city. Except we have not seen the
gardener yet. It is hidden, waiting, biding its time. It pricked
its finger on a thorn bush it did not expect to grow near its
succulent fruit, and although such a scratch will hardly hurt it in
the long run, it is still hiding from the thorn because it did not
know such a thing existed and does not yet know what to do with it.
It will decide eventually. Until then the garden grows wild.

And what a strange and miraculous garden it
is! We have seen many in our time, trimmed into many shapes and
cultivated to grow many exotic fruits, but never have we seen one
quite like this. The way the gardener tended it has had unintended
side effects. Where the vines should grow all over and the leaves
should stretch out to steal sunlight from other plants, it is
almost as though the garden has become self-tending, afraid of the
possibility of its own random growth. We must still watch, waiting,
to see what comes next as we see vermin heading for the garden.
They will eat that which has meticulously grown itself, perhaps. Or
perhaps the garden has developed more thorns than what we have yet
seen.

We feel that which we have come here for, and
we open the front door. At this time of night the door is locked,
but locks do not mean anything to us. We walk through the front
lobby, finding and hiding in shadows where there should be none in
the well-lit halls. The men and women at the nurses’ station do not
look up as we pass. We could reach out right now and pluck one
right from beneath the noses of the others. It would be hours
before those that remain would realize anything was amiss. But we
will not do that. It would be vulgar for the most part, although we
do sense the abnormal and rampant growth of cells in one nurse’s
lungs. He does not even know they are there yet. We will have to
remember him if we stay in the city long enough for the mass to
become something inexorable, and then we can come back for him.

Instead we continue down the hall, past many
doors with occupants sleeping restlessly behind them. Our presence
sooths them and they drift further into sleep, experiencing the
deepest and most calming rest of perhaps their entire lives. Except
one doesn’t. Behind one door there is a woman who feels her end
coming, but not from us. She can feel her body finally giving out
after so many years. We, in turn, can feel her deep desire to just
have it be done.

We do not allow her to be aware of our
presence even as we grip her tightly but gently, whisking back
through the halls and out into the night. She becomes calm,
peaceful, even as we take to the air, even as we rip her jugular to
pieces and drink her, only occasionally spilling a drop of her
blood on the anxious city below.

True enough, Cory
woke when he heard the minute creak of wood in some distant room of
the building, not that he was terribly upset about having his rest
disturbed. Despite what he had hoped, there was very little actual
rest to be had. Although the mattress had initially felt pleasant,
it had slowly felt uncomfortable beneath him. It was too soft. He
was used to metal or concrete beneath him, and he’d had to throw
off the blankets when they began to feel like a creature slowly
smothering him to death. When he did sleep he had nightmares, but
those were nothing new. The only difference in them now was that
they would be punctuated with gunshots and he kept waking with a
start, the same jolt going through his body as though he had dreamt
he was falling.

The creak was not directly in the apartment
but rather somewhere out in the hall on the spongy floorboards. He
immediately jumped out of bed, slow by his normal standards but
still fast enough that any human watching him would have had
trouble following him. He instinctively went for the most shadowed
corner of the room and listened carefully for the next noise. He
supposed it could have been the decrepit old building settling, or
even finally starting its inevitable collapse if the past fire had
done enough structural damage, but he had learned to always assume
that something out of the ordinary was someone or something out to
get him. That was the kind of belief that would have served him
well last night if he’d obeyed it, and he wasn’t about to make the
same mistake two days in a row.

He thought he heard more footsteps, although
he couldn’t be sure now. Whoever it was now took more care not to
hit any of the weak spots in the floor. There was a possibility
that meant the person was familiar with the building. Probably the
woman, but he didn’t know for certain if anyone else lived here,
especially since it was obvious by now that no one was supposed to
be living here at all.

He stayed in his corner until he heard the
apartment’s door open. Whoever came in the door did it slowly, and
there was a rustle of plastic that indicated a number of grocery
bags. After another minute or so of building up his nerve, Cory
slunk to the door and poked his head out for his first view of the
rest of the apartment. This looked to be the only bedroom, with a
large living room beyond, a kitchen nook, and another door that he
assumed was the bathroom. Now that he was conscious enough to pay
attention to his surrounding he realized there was a distinctly
unpleasant smell coming from the bathroom, although it wasn’t a
scent he hadn’t come across in the occasional alley. He doubted the
plumbing in this place was working properly, but that bathroom was
still being used.

He saw several shopping bags abandoned by the
front door. The woman had her back to him in the kitchen nook and
she was examining something she was pulling from another bag,
giving it a close once over with the fridge open in front of her.
The light was out in the fridge and Cory had to assume it didn’t
have any power, but she put something inside anyway.

The woman hummed quietly to herself,
something rather cheerful that Cory didn’t recognize, but she moved
a lot slower than she had last night. Either what she had been
doing outside had worn her out, or she hadn’t gotten much sleep
after her impromptu surgery. Looking around the living room Cory
could see exactly where it had taken place, as there was a bright
red bloodstain on the threadbare carpet. With any other person the
stain would have turned brownish by now, but apparently Cory’s
blood didn’t work that way. The stain was large, about half as long
as he was tall. Again there was a difference from if he had been
normal—that much blood loss should have killed him. For all he knew
all his blood could have drained completely out of him and he still
might survive.

Normal or not, his body would still need to
recover from that kind of trauma. And for that kind of recovery, he
would need to eat.

He looked at all the blood on the floor, some
of it hastily covered up with dirty towels. Then he looked at the
woman, still unaware that he was watching. Even if he couldn’t move
as quickly as he should he would still be able to stay silent. He
could be up behind her before she realized he was there.

If this were fiction, she would be dead
before he could give it any thought. That was what vampires were
supposed to do according to humans. It’s most certainly what the
enigmatic Vlad the Mystery would have done.

In Cory’s experience, though, that didn’t
happen, at least not with the vampires who had escaped from that
cave on the lake. Vlad the Mystery, whoever or whatever he or she
was, was the exception. All the others had learned early on, since
that was all they were allowed to eat, that blood from any animal
at all would do. Mammals seemed to be the best. Birds worked well,
even if there seemed to be something lacking in them. Cory had even
tried an iguana once. If he had to compare it to a normal human
food, he would have compared the lizard to tofu—all the requisite
nutrition with none of the personality. A vampire would have to be
psychotic to think a human was all they could feast on.

Of course, that didn’t prevent Cory from
sniffing the air and identifying the woman as a fresh juicy source
of nourishment. He just had the sense to be embarrassed by it.

There was something else that he got a whiff
of in the air, though. More blood, not exactly fresh, but blood
nonetheless. He suddenly realized just how desperately hungry he
truly was at the moment. Healing from a bullet that could have
killed even him was enough to work up an appetite.

He moved out of the bedroom, keeping low to
the floor out of habit. He knew he should have just been able to
stand, but the very thought of that gave him a minor panic. Out in
the living room he now had a better view of everything and saw
that, abandoned building or not, the woman or at least someone had
been making this place their home for some time. There was a couch
with stained cushions that looked like it had come from the
eighties, and multiple chairs at almost random points around the
room that didn’t even come close to matching each other. A couple
more generic pictures were hung on the wall, but all of them
without exception were crooked. Judging from the thick scum of dust
on them, Cory had to wonder if they’d been left behind by the
apartment’s previous tenants. The room’s windows were all covered,
but unlike his own room these were hung with mismatched blankets
that only let in light around the edges, giving the whole apartment
a gloom that Cory actually found homey.

After the woman finished loading the items in
the fridge she finally turned around and saw him crouched by the
doorway. She paused for only the briefest of moments, a pause that
Cory interpreted as being fear that she quickly hid. She definitely
knew what he was. There was no question about it, especially
considering what she had just put in the broken fridge and the odor
that he smelled from the other bags still by the door. The jars of
blood, probably from a butcher or meat market. Cory highly doubted
she needed any of that for herself.

“You’re awake,” she said. Although he was
certain that was fear he had seen in her just seconds ago, she did
an excellent job of hiding it now. Her voice was cheerful, even a
little excited. “I didn’t know if… you know…”

Cory didn’t know, and he didn’t volunteer any
answer. He just stayed where he was, remaining aware at all times
of where the door into the hall was and just how far he had to go
to get there.

“If you needed to sleep during the daytime,”
she finished, her voice dropping almost into a conspiratorial
whisper. Cory thought for a moment of pretending that he didn’t
know what she was talking about, but that was just a knee-jerk
reaction. There was no point to hiding anything from her at this
point.

“I don’t need to,” Cory said. “Although it’s
nice when I can.” He tensed as he said it. Even that much
information felt like he was giving away too much, although he had
no idea how such a small tidbit could be used against him even if
he were talking to someone he didn’t trust. And he realized that he
did trust her despite his earlier judgments, at least a small
amount. He figured he owed that much to a woman willing to pull a
poison bullet out of his guts with no questions asked.

Almost as though she could read his thoughts
she said, “I figure you owe me, right?”

The urge to bolt became stronger, but he
fought it and nodded. “Depends, I guess.”

“All I want is a true answer. Can you give me
that?”

Cory shrugged. He shuffled toward the couch,
although he didn’t sit in it. He hunched down next to it, keeping
to the shadows along the wall nearby. “I suppose.”

“Are you him?” the woman asked.

“Who?” he asked. But he knew damn well who
she meant.

“The one they’re calling Vlad the Impaler.”
Cory had heard that name, although it wasn’t common in his circles.
The Fond du Lac
Reporter
usually called him or her “Vlad”
these days, intentionally leaving off the more lurid descriptor.
Among the vampires he had been dubbed Vlad the Mystery both because
they knew well enough that he wasn’t impaling anyone and because
not a single vampire seemed to know the slightest thing about his
or her identity. The only thing Cory or anyone else knew for
certain was that he must have been down in that hole with the rest
of them. Unless he wasn’t a vampire at all, but his victims had all
the classic marks of a vampire attack from the tales. Their throats
were ripped out by what were obviously very sharp teeth, and most
of their blood was gone. There was nothing else that connected any
of the victims—black, white, Asian, Native-America, man or woman,
gay or straight. The youngest had been eleven and the oldest had
been eighty-three.