Death of an Immortal (2 page)

He pulled out his phone and looked her up. There was a Jamie Lee Howe from Bend, just on the other side of the Cascade mountain range. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed southeast, toward Mount Hood.

Terrill had sworn he would never kill again. But he had. He was still vampire, not human. All he could do now was try to make up for it somehow, to make amends to the girl’s family and friends. To rebuild what little shreds of humanity he still contained by learning all he could about Jamie Lee Howe. Who was she, and how had she ended up in the bed of a vampire?

Chapter 3

Jamie had wanted him to find her, Carlan was sure of it. She had signed in with her own name. Had she suspected there was something wrong? Was it a cry for help?

“You knew her?” one of the techs asked. It was quiet in the motel room, except for the shuffling sound of the plastic shoe covers they wore and the occasional squeak of latex gloves.

She was exposed to the world, naked. There was little blood. She looked pale and lovely.
Peaceful,
Carlan thought.
Peaceful at last.

“She was like this when you found her?” he asked the tech.

“We untangled her from the bedspread. We’re thinking whoever killed her knew her, because they carefully covered her up. They crossed her arms across her chest.”

Carlan shook his head. Jamie didn’t know anyone in Portland. Why had she come here? What was she doing in a seedy motel? Why had she left him? He’d taken care of her for years––she had wanted for nothing. That last time, he’d even offered to marry her.

Damn her and her obstinacy. What had gotten into her?

He wanted to lie down beside her, lay his head on her chest. He struggled for a moment to contain his impulse, turning away from the tech.

Someone opened the curtains and the room flooded with light. Everyone in the room flinched. Carlan put his hand up, shielding his face from the light, and turned away. He looked down at Jamie again. Her eyes seemed to be staring at him. Accusing him. It was his fault she was here. His fault she was dead.

She looked tiny, deflated. He always called her “Short Stuff,” but she had been a dynamo in a small package. Now she looked like she’d been soaked in bleach, all the color drained from her.

“Close the damn curtains.” The voice was commanding, and as soon as the room dimmed again, Carlan saw a very large, very fat man in the doorway. The guy had a huge bald head and small, narrowed eyes that surveyed the motel room, landing on Carlan. “Who are you?”

“Richard Carlan. Bend Police.”

“What’s your interest in the case?”

“I dated her for a while. Her family asked me to find her.”

“How long have you been in town?”

“I drove over the pass this morning.”

The big cop stared at him. They both knew that in cases like this, the boyfriend or husband was always the primary suspect. Finally, a big beefy hand was extended. “Detective Brosterhouse.”

Carlan shook the hand. His eyes went back to Jamie. “Why is there no blood?”

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to believe this.” The older cop leaned over and gently turned Jamie’s head, revealing two deep punctures in her neck.

“So you’re thinking?”

“The lab guys found some blood in the bathtub. I think he probably drained her there and then wanted us to think ‘vampire.’ Or he thought he was a vampire. Who knows what these nutcases think?”

Carlan was trying to act professional, like it was any other crime scene, any other murder he’d seen. But it was Jamie. His Jamie.

She looked utterly defenseless on the floor, her nakedness… he closed his eyes.

“Can’t…” he faltered. “Can’t you cover her up?”

Brosterhouse nodded to the tech, who flipped one of the corners of the blanket over her.

Just like that, she was gone. Forever.

Carlan would find the person who did this and kill him. She was his––no one else’s. She’d run away from him, but it was all a misunderstanding. Things had gotten messy, complicated. He’d lashed out, but he hadn’t meant any of it.

She hadn’t given him a chance to explain, to apologize, to make up.

Brosterhouse was watching him. He struggled to keep his face impassive.

“The only real mystery here,” the Portland cop said, “is why the vampire charade. Other than that… well, it’s obvious she was a working girl.”

Carlan’s face flushed and his jaw clenched. He couldn’t help it.

Brosterhouse nodded as if confirming something to himself. “I’m willing to let you help us,” he said. “But you need to check with me before you do anything, got it? Meanwhile, give me the number to your station in Bend.”

Carlan rattled off the number. They were going to check on him, he knew. They’d find out that she had had a restraining order on him. Once, that would’ve been embarrassing, but with Jamie dead, he didn’t care.

He hadn’t left Bend until six a.m., but he’d have to find a way to prove that. Forensics had already determined that she had died sometime between midnight and dawn.

With or without the help of the Portland cops, Carlan was going to find whoever had done this. He was going to make the killer pay. He wanted whoever had done this to feel the same despair, the same sense of loss, that he did.

Whoever had killed Jamie must have family, friends. He’d find the murderer. But more, he’d find whoever the murderer loved most and…

“We’re ready to move her now,” the forensics guy said to Brosterhouse.

The big cop waved Carlan out of the room. They stood to one side of the door, on the landing, as the body was loaded onto the gurney and wheeled from the motel room.

“Wait,” Carlan said suddenly.

“What is it?” Brosterhouse asked. Something in his tone suggested that he was expecting Carlan to confess or something.

“Let me see her again.”

“She’s gone, pal. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“No… I need to check something.”

Brosterhouse hesitated, then went over to the gurney and unzipped the body bag. Carlan leaned over. He tried not to look at her face as he stared at her punctured neck.

“She’s missing a necklace, a silver crucifix. Her mother gave it to her.” Unbidden and unwanted, the image came to him of the last time he’d seen her: her battered face, her bloody fingers holding the crucifix as if it would protect her from his blows. He felt a moment of doubt; then his hunger for revenge returned.

“Whoever killed her took it.”

Chapter 4

As he drove up the Mount Hood pass, the thick forests of the Cascade Mountains reminded Terrill of the old Black Forest of his youth. He was comfortable with the shadows, the darkness of the rocks and streams. Once, upon arriving in the Northwest, he had experimented by bundling up and walking the Pacific Crest Trail in daytime, just to see if he could do it. He had gone for miles, evading sunlit areas, hopping from shadow to shadow. He loved the rain and the thick growth of trees and vegetation.

He had never been east of the summit.

At the top of the pass, the trees changed––within seconds, it seemed––from thick fir forests with heavy underbrush to larger and more expansive ponderosa pines with little undergrowth.

The air became dry, fragrant with the smells of pine needles and bitterbrush. The sun seemed brighter and lower to the earth.

Terrill almost turned around. He could do nothing to bring the girl, Jamie, back. What would he accomplish by putting himself in danger? In the rearview mirror, he saw comfortably slate-gray skies with dotted trails of rain clouds overhanging the Willamette Valley. Ahead, he saw brightness and danger.

The High Desert, a part of the Great American Basin, was something he’d purposely avoided, flying over by airplane every time he needed to travel. East of Bend, he knew, were miles and miles of lava rock slopes, filled with low, scraggly juniper trees and dry, woody sagebrush. He felt exposed just thinking about it.

Vampires thrived in the visceral fluids of men and of the earth; in the darkness and the cover of the cities, in dark and rainy forests and mountains. They avoided the sparseness of small towns, where a local might be immediately missed and a stranger immediately suspected. Above all, vampires avoided the sun.

Terrill pulled over to the side of the road.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked himself out loud.

He could turn around, head farther north, into Olympic National Park and on to the equally rainy Seattle area. It wasn’t too late.

#

“Where are you from?” Jamie asked. It was after their first lovemaking session. She had started off stiff and uncomfortable, but his need had been great and he had ignored her discomfort at first. Then something had changed inside him, and he had slowed down and tried to bring her along with him. That had never happened before. He took what he needed and wanted from humans, without caring whether they liked it.

But he had to admit, it had been a more satisfying experience somehow when she had climaxed with him… or at least pretended to. She was a whore, he reminded himself.

“Nowhere and everywhere,” he answered finally.

“That’s too bad,” she said. She frowned.

“Why?” he asked. Most people were intrigued by his answer, envious of his world-weary traveler pose, but she seemed almost to pity him.

“I love Bend, my hometown. It’s the best of all worlds. It has everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Yet here you are, in Portland.”

“Only for awhile. I’ll go back as soon as…”

“As soon as what?”

“I have a couple of things I have to work out. There is… someone… I need distance from. But eventually, I’ll go back. I know it.”

He watched her face as she was speaking, and her enthusiasm was irresistible. He grabbed her and slid her underneath him while she laughed.

“You should visit sometime. I think you’d like it there!” she said.

“I like it right here, right now.”

#

The summit of the Mount Hood pass was half in shadow and half in light. Terrill pulled out onto the highway and drove down into the light.

Half the trees he passed were orange, seemingly dead.
Pine beetle damage
, Terrill thought, thinking he’d read something about it in
The Oregonian
. The dryness didn’t make him any more comfortable. The mountain lakes were bright blue and the roads to them paved with red cinders. He kept to the main highway and drove through the quaint tourist town of Sisters and on into Bend.

He’d become practiced at finding local motels where he could pass unnoticed. Not too fancy, not too seedy; not too new or too old; bland and slightly downhill of their peak: that’s what Terrill preferred. Bend had several that fit the bill.

It was still hours until dark. This late in the year, he’d be able to venture out after about four p.m. as long as he wore his hat and gloves and a long scarf wrapped around his face. But he had a couple of hours to kill until then, so he drove around, exploring the town. It didn’t take him more than hour to drive all the main roads.

Finally, he judged it dark enough to pull up to the office of one of the motels, park under the overhang there, and hop out. He rented a room with a queen-size bed, microwave, and refrigerator, and paid for a week.

Terrill checked into his room and then consulted the Yellow Pages for the nearest independent butcher. He got back in the car and drove to the butcher’s, where he ordered several pounds of steak, and then drove back to the motel. He ate the meat raw, licking the butcher paper clean of blood.

The blandness of the blood brought back the memory of his feeding on Jamie. He hadn’t wanted that. Especially not after trying for decades not to kill another human. Especially not her. He had really liked her, perhaps more than any other mortal woman in his long existence.

Terrill felt defeated, sick, and the raw meat did little to make him feel satiated. He wouldn’t feel satiated ever again, not if he could help it. He would starve first.

Or so he told himself.

But the memory of waking up, staring into an empty mirror, and feeling the old bloodlust again was overpowering. Even as he’d sunk his teeth into her neck, he’d been aware of the wrongness of it. Even as he’d drained her, he had known he was killing her.

But he couldn’t stop.

Never again would he trust himself to seek comfort in another human being.
Another human being?
No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t human.

He was a monster. He had always been a monster. He would always be a monster.

Chapter 5

In London, England, Horsham awoke at the exact moment the sun went down. There was a soft sound in the other room, and his fangs immediately extended, his face elongated, and his claws dug into the mattress. He leapt off the bed and was at the door in moments. Then he stopped and took a breath.
No!
he thought.
Rule Three: Never feed where you live. Take hold of yourself!

He was gripping the doorknob so hard that it had crumpled in his hand. Saliva dripped from his jaws to the floor, but he retracted his fangs. He rolled his shoulders, trying to relax them, and looked down at his claws and turned them back into human hands.

The servant girl in the next room turned when the door opened. Her fabled master, whom she had never seen in person before, came in wearing a thick bathrobe, his dark hair tousled and an even darker look on his face.

“You are never to be here when I awake,” he growled. “Get out!”

She paled, as if realizing the danger she was in. “I’m sorry. The paperboy was late today, so…”

“Get out!”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” She fled from the room, closing the door behind her.

Normally, the coffee and morning newspaper were waiting in the kitchen when Horsham woke up at dusk. The servants and guards who protected him throughout the day were gone––for their own protection. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself when he first woke up. At that vulnerable moment, his hunger was always at its strongest and most instinctual.