Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“I killed three more, including the bar owner’s wife. She had been saving up to take a trip to Paris; it was her life’s dream.

“Her dream would go unfulfilled due to my actions.

“Another of my victims, I would learn to my distaste, was a man with an engagement ring in his pocket. He was simply at the bar to tip back a few pints of ale and muster up the courage to ask for his girl’s hand. He already had permission from her father.

“When the bar was emptied of all living humans, one of the male members of our group retrieved a cleaver from the kitchen and started the task of beheading the dead. When he was finished with all but my four victims, I took the cleaver from him. I insisted that I take care of my own dead. When I finished with the task, as the others were looting and reveling in their deeds, I hid the cleaver in the waistband of my pants.

“We burned the bar to the ground and retreated to the lair.

“The next night I announced that I would be hunting on my own. Only Bane seemed to care. ‘I think you should stay with us,’ he said when he knew the others could not hear.

“‘Do you worry for my safety?’ I asked.

“‘I do; as much—or more—as you worry about my sanity, my friend.’ He smiled at me and in that smile I saw a shadow of the Bane I had known when I first turned him. Then the smile faded and the blue eyes clouded over with the dark anger I associated with so many vampires before him; they were the eyes of the insane.

“‘I will not do this again. I will not take any more innocent life. I do not understand how you can. You are as moral a creature as I, and still you cavort with these heathens you brought into being. Let us destroy them and be done with his mummer’s farce.

“He touched my cheek gently. ‘Perhaps you were right,’ he said sadly. ‘My sanity must have abandoned me because I cannot destroy my children. I need them as much as you needed me. I wanted our future to be as you wished: just you and I. But I could not shake the desire for more. I am sorry that you alone were not enough for me. I need them as well.’

“‘They will turn on you,’ I warned.

“‘I’m sure one day they will,’ he said. ‘And when that time comes I will deserve what I get. But I will not turn on them. If you must move on, it is with great sadness that I let you go. If you wish to stay, you will have to abide by my rules. What will you decide?’

“I chose to stay and he was relieved. But I would never live by his rules. I had another reason for staying.

“And so it was, one hundred and twenty-seven years after creating Bane, I made the decision to destroy him. The only question left was how?

“The underlings would be first. I still had the cleaver and could dispatch the group one by one, but Bane would not be so easy. Once he had learned of my actions, he would hunt me down. I decided I would use his anger against him.

“On the night that I had chosen for our final night as a group, I waited until the others had gone and approached the female. She was the strongest of the group, besides Bane and myself. ‘Your hold on Bane will not last forever,’ I said.

“She laughed. ‘You have that backward, old one,’ she said. ‘We have nearly convinced him that you have outlived your usefulness and should be destroyed. Soon, you will be no more. Just as soon as I have worked your last few desperately clutching fingers from him, he will agree to let us rip you apart where you stand.’

“‘I believe you are too late,’ I said.

“‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked. In reply I reached out and snapped her neck. She dropped to the ground. This alone, however, will not kill a vampire. Given time, she could regenerate. She would revive and warn the others of my attack, but I had effectively incapacitated her long enough for me to sever her head with the cleaver. I stored her body in the old lair.

“I took out the second vampire simply by approaching him from behind and severing his head. He was stored alongside his female companion. The third was not as easy as the first two. I managed to get him alone, but he was a suspicious lad, had been even in his human form. I did not get the correct hold on his head I needed to break his neck as I had with the female. She had been easy because she felt herself to be superior to me. She had forgotten that I may have been old, but in vampire lives older means stronger, faster. This distrustful dolt feared me and was ready when I tried to make my move.

“He screamed and attempted to flee. Holding onto him was like trying to hold a slippery fish in a rocking boat. When I finally pinned him down to where I could finish what I had started, it took several tries with the cleaver to sever his head. At one point, I had to saw through his neck to break the tendons. As his vocal cords were severed he managed an eerie garbled cry that sounded like someone gargling acid. When I finally finished with this one he, too, was taken to the abandoned lair.

“I killed the third male as easily as the first two attacks; as he, like the female, was a conceited fool. He just didn’t think I had the strength, speed, or the stones, to defeat him.

“For my final victim I would need to be very fast. My plan was to kill him in front of Bane, invoking his anger. If my plan failed, the two of them would have no trouble taking me down. As I approached the last of the underlings, I saw that Bane, too, was there. I walked up to the vampire and smiled. He smiled back.

“‘It’s close to sunrise,’ I said.

“‘So,’ the vampire said stupidly.

“‘Bane,’ I called out. When he looked toward me I said, ‘This is your last underling.’

“‘What?’ the underling said.

“I grabbed the buffoon by the shirt and watched as his eyes widened at the sight of the cleaver. I took off his head in one clean swipe. His head fell back, bursting into ash. The husk of his dead body drifted to the dirt below my feet.

“‘He was the last,’ I said. “Now there are no more of your bastard underlings, and it is just us once again.’ Bane stared at me for a minute or two. His eyes narrowed into angry slits. Then the chase was on. I moved through trees and over grass; and over stone and over dirt paths alike. Bane followed at almost the same speed. He had no trouble keeping up with me. If I started to pull too far ahead of him, I would slow just enough to keep him in sight. At one point I was almost caught because Bane realized what I was doing and adjusted his speed to make me think he was falling behind, but when I slowed he sped up. He reached out and I felt his fingertips graze the back of my neck. I leaned forward to avoid him grasping the back of my shirt collar and forced more speed into my legs.

“The near miss must have motivated him, because suddenly I was racing at my top speed and he was still at my heels. When I reached my destination I leapt to the side and decelerated. When Bane realized I was no longer in front of him he stopped and turned back. He saw me standing at the opening of a crenellation in the ruins of a castle. Earlier I had positioned a stone slab to serve as my barricade, and now I pushed it into place. It effectively blocked out all light. I could hear Bane hammering at the outer surface of the gigantic stone. I had known Bane long enough to judge his strength accurately, and I didn’t misjudge him. This slab was too heavy for him and the sun was about to rise.

“There was nothing nearby to use as protection from the sun. When He stopped assaulting the barrier I knew he was heading back to the coal mine lair. The sun rose and I fell into death sleep.

“The following night I woke and pushed the barrier aside. I climbed out into the cool night air and waited for Bane. He did not come. I raced back to the mine shaft lair. I had used dynamite to destroy this entrance to the lair, preventing entry. The rubble had not been touched. Next, I returned to the original lair I had shared with Bane for so long. But this, too, was not a viable shelter any longer. I had burnt the building to the ground, the floorboards torn up. The charred remains of the five vampires I had killed still rested where I had placed them. Not far from the remains I found something else.

“I stood over the bubbling puddle of oozing, putrefying flesh, and shards of bone. ‘Goodbye my friend,’ I said and turned away from the remains.

“After Bane, I vowed to never turn another vampire, and I must continue my restraint or risk losing another friend to the madness.”

“I would never do that,” David said and leaned back in his chair. “I think Bane had always had it in him to kill and torture, but that’s not me. I care about life, and I would continue to care even as a vampire.”

“I believe you,” Antony laced his fingers together thoughtfully. “But I will not change you. Now be a peach, will you; and dispose of this body?”

“I have a big surprise for you tonight,” David said the following night as he followed Antony out of the dark bedroom.

Antony turned to face David and waited patiently for the surprise.

“I found you a baby killer.”

Antony’s eyes furrowed. “Who else?”

“A couple of killers, but those we’ll have to collect in the wild. I didn’t have a chance to nab them.”

“A hunt?” Antony turned and continued down the hall. “I’m up for that.”

David drove him to hobo row, where a homeless guy had been nabbed for killing two tourists but released due to a mix up at the evidence locker. The killer was dumped right back onto the street. Antony strolled up behind the man and spun him like a ballerina, dipped him in a dance of death, and then sunk his teeth deep into his unshaven neck. The decapitated body was dumped into the canal where it sank into the muck, never to be found.

Next David drove Antony to the other side of town where the second target’s apartment complex was located.

The target wasn’t home. In a panic, David searched through his notes until he found another suitable blood bag for Antony. The next man lived alone. Antony to enter his house and took him as he slept. When the man was dead, Antony opened the front door and allowed David entry to dispose of the body.

The extra time put Antony in a hard spot. He needed his third transfusion quickly, or risk letting the blood sickness make him go insane with blood lust. If that happened, even David wasn’t safe.

              In the passenger side of the Toyota Rav4, Antony said, “What are the details for this…baby killer?”

David glared at his companion. After a moment, he explained.              “Her name is Maggie Owens. Her daughter was killed—murdered. This isn’t crib death and an outraged community. The baby died by being shaken. The mother went on trial but was acquitted because of lack of evidence.”

              “Are we sure she is the killer?”

              David turned to Antony, shocked that the vampire would question his investigation skills. Antony had to point back to the road to remind David to turn his attention back to the task of driving.

              “The baby is dead because of injury and she was the only person in the house. She was suffering from postpartum depression.”

              “Why was she not found guilty?”

              “She claimed the baby’s daddy killed the girl, but although Daddy couldn’t be found—no proof he had even been in the picture since the birth—the jury sided with her. Reasonable doubt. She killed that baby and got away with it. I’m sick of these baby killers getting away with their vile crimes. It’s time for a little payback, right?”

              Antony ignored the diatribe.

              David pulled up to the curb outside Ms. Owens’s apartment building. He told Antony the apartment number and floor.

“              Baby killers are difficult to confirm,” Antony said before getting out of the car. “So many are accused but were not guilty of the crime, only accessories after the fact. That is not good enough. I could wipe out the entire human race if I fed on every person who knew about a crime. I need the person whose heart had been muddied by the deed.”

David gripped the steering wheel with white knuckled strength but didn’t turn to look at Antony. “She’s guilty.”

              Antony entered the home without effort: locked doors were no match for him. He slipped silently though the rooms barely even touching the floor. He left behind no fingerprints, dead skin, or hair. There was no way to trace his DNA since any dead skin or hair that dropped off his person instantly turned to ash and disintegrated. He found the woman asleep in her bed.

A crib sat empty nearby.

              Antony paused. That was not a sign of a guilty mother. She was a grieving mother. Her loneliness and pain was palpable in the room. They had made a mistake.

              But Antony’s bloodlust began to take over. He didn’t have time to start over. This had to be the right person. His stony gray eyes filmed over with a blood-red tint. He needed to feed soon. Once the madness took over there was no stopping the hunger. He either fed now, or no one was safe; not this grieving woman, or David, or any innocent bystander on the street. This woman would have to die. If nothing else, Antony could at least relieve her of the pain of grief.

              Antony moved closer to the bed and woke her with a hand over her mouth. She looked up at him as he moved into position; she was already awake. In fact, she had been waiting for him. He removed his hand.

“I knew you would come,” she said.

              Antony was startled. Did she know who he was—or more to the point—what he was?

He peered into her eyes, into her soul. What he found there confirmed his suspicions. This woman did not kill her child. “I am sorry. I know you are innocent of the crime of killing your baby but I must feed.” He closed his eyes. His head dropped toward her neck and he prepared to take her.

              She didn’t scream as he had expected her to.

              She pleaded. “Please wait.”

              “I must!” He opened his eyes and she saw that they were red. She gasped. He had been trying to save her the added fear of seeing the bloodlust in his eyes, but she had seen anyway. Now she knew he was more than just a killer.

              “Please.” She said again. She had planned to say more but the sobbing overtook her and she couldn’t speak. When Antony saw the terror in her eyes, his sanity momentarily flooded back to him. He could control it, but only in short bursts. Whatever she had to say would need to be fast, and there was no guarantee anything she had to say would do her any good.

              Antony stood abruptly. This movement was so fast she flinched. She almost screamed, but managed to keep her wits long enough to realize that his movement was away from her and not closer to her. She sat up.

Antony paced. He was doing everything in his power to control the hunger. He turned toward her again. “I must do this!” He again jumped on her, moving so fast she didn’t see him until he was straddling her, his mouth moving toward her neck, toward the throbbing vein there. The instant he was about to penetrate her skin, the door to the bedroom burst open. Antony froze with his fangs touching the flesh of her slender neck.

              “What the hell? Bitch what are you doing now?” It was Grover Dixon, the dead infant’s father.

              Antony glanced into Maggie’s eyes and she whispered the words that would save her life. “It was him.”

              Antony wasted no time. He flew at the man in an instant, landing on him like a leopard taking down a gazelle. His teeth ripped into the man’s neck and he sucked up the pulsing fluid. His sanity slowly returned, but his ability to taste his victim’s memories did not. He was feeding on this man without knowing for sure he was the killer. It didn’t matter.

              No, it did matter. To Antony it mattered. Antony stopped feeding long enough to peer into the man’s eyes. What he saw there satisfied his need to be sure and he finished feeding. He had only wasted enough blood to pump out in a single beat of the heart, but it was the first time he had ever wasted even a drop of blood.

              Moments later David came into the room with something black loosely draped over one shoulder. The drained man had already been decapitated. Antony stood at the window. Maggie sat huddled on the bed, staring at the decapitated corpse. She looked up at the young man who had just entered. Her questioning glare was shaded with confusion and awe. She shivered, in shock, and began to hyperventilate. Antony glanced at her, concerned. He started to approach her but she motioned for him to stay back. He obeyed, not wanting to worsen her condition.

Maggie reached into the drawer of her bedside table and pulled out a small, crumpled paper bag. She started breathing into it. After a moment she was able to talk.

“I’m okay.” She panted. When her breathing had steadied, she continued. “I have panic attacks. They came on after Molly died, but I’ve learned to control them without medication.”

David stared dumbly at her. Wasn’t she afraid of the vampire in the room, or the decapitated body?

“Who’s going to take care of that?” Maggie pointed to the body of her ex-lover, her baby’s daddy, her baby’s killer.

              Antony gave her the briefest look then turned to David. The anger in his voice caused even David’s blood to turn cold. “Take care of it.”

              He stormed toward the door, but turned back before leaving.

              “And bring her. She’ll have to come with us until I can figure out what to do with her.”