Rule of Vampire (20 page)

He’d searched every alley, every vacant lot, and every uninhabited house. He’d explored all the parks, all the beaches, and every thoroughfare. She could be living in the woods, he supposed, but she was nowhere where he could find her.

The disappearances and murders had overwhelmed the police department, and the FBI had taken over the entire town. The cops were at the FBI’s beck and call, but Robert had stopped reporting in.

On the second day after the arrival of the caravan of vampire hunters and other FBI agents, he’d been pulled aside by the leader of the group, an agent named Feller.

“We don’t have time for personal missions,” Feller had said sternly.

Robert couldn’t even get angry. It didn’t matter what this agent said; he wasn’t going to change what he was doing.

“I mean it, Jurgenson––Robert, is it? Look, Robert, this could make you or break you.”

Robert had nodded. “Sure.”

“Listen, this is the chance of a lifetime. Promotions and honors and a hefty raise in pay await if you just follow instructions.”

Robert had walked away and forgotten the conversation five minutes later.

After that, it seemed like Feller had it in for him, assigning him menial tasks––getting coffee, buying printer paper, collating files, and so on––which Robert did if it was convenient and ignored if it wasn’t.

They had a huge blowup on the fourth day––or at least, Feller did. Robert just walked away again, and this time, he didn’t go back.

He still listened to the police scanner, hoping for and dreading the words “female perp.” Each time, he held his breath until it was clear it wasn’t Jamie.

The FBI had insisted they not use the words “vampire” or “kill.” Murders were referred to as “accidents” and vampires were “perps.” Ordinary crime was being ignored––not that there was much of it. People were staying inside, behind locked doors, and many of them had guns. The police and FBI had to make it very clear who they were before they dared knock on a door.

After being shot at a couple of times, Robert was yelling “POLICE!” every time he turned a blind corner. Once or twice, early in his search, he had come across vampires, and he’d shot them in the head and called it in. He hadn’t waited around to see what the FBI did with the bodies. He’d dragged the first body into the sunlight to get a good look at her and had nearly been scorched when the vampire burst into flames.

Robert had been ordered to come in to the police station but was ignoring the command. He didn’t care about his career anymore. He’d only been working because he didn’t want to sit at home and rot away. Now, what did it matter? He was dying. He just wanted to see Jamie one more time.

Part of him hoped she had left the area. He was pretty convinced she had; otherwise, he was certain, she would have tried to get ahold of him. His phone was charged and on the passenger seat next to him. He checked it––again––to make sure it was on.
Why wouldn’t she call?
he wondered.
Does she think I hate her?

He picked up the phone and called her number again. The first few times he’d called her, it had gone to voicemail. Now it was saying that no such number existed.

Was she dead? Had she been caught up in the vampire holocaust?

Robert pulled over and put his face in his hands. After he had been alone for so long, she had come into his life and become part of him. When she ran away, she left a lonely, aching void. Nothing could fill that void: nothing but her face, her voice, her smell.

A deep, throbbing pain wrenched through his gut, and he clenched the steering wheel until it subsided. It was always there now, in varying degrees of intensity. He had pain pills the doctors had given him. His oncologist had made a point of saying something like “taking five at a time is too many,” hinting at a permanent solution if the pain got too bad. But Robert wasn’t taking even one at a time. They made him foggy, slow to react. He’d taken one the other night when the pain was so bad that he couldn’t sleep. Instead of his usual six hours, he hadn’t woken up for twelve. He’d groaned, immediately checked his phone, and anxiously listened to the scanner until he was sure that Jamie hadn’t been caught.

He needed to be alert, ready to respond to any sighting of a female “perp” who matched her description.

Robert had loved his first wife: she had been his high school sweetheart. But his feelings for her had settled into a comfortable, middle-aged appreciation. With Jamie, it was as if it was the first and only time he’d felt real love. Every waking moment was filled with the thought of her, and he could call up her ghost, almost see her, almost hear her laugh––but that only made her absence hurt more.

He didn’t know what they would do if he found her and she still wanted to be with him. Hide? Run away? He didn’t care. He just wanted to know if was possible for them to be together again. He was certain it
was
possible, that they’d find a way.

Hadn’t she felt the same way? Didn’t she want to know if they had any chance at a future?

So he kept driving around the small town, up and down the highways and the lanes and the dead-end streets, day and night, looking for any sign of her.

Vampire sightings had grown scarce, and then one day the scanner had come alive with agitated voices, and the massacre at the Comfort Inn had reignited the search for vampires. But the excitement had soon died down as vampire sightings again dwindled.

He’d seen his former brother-in-law once. Callendar had flagged him down as he was passing a crime scene, and he’d reluctantly stopped. It was clear, though, that the FBI agent was only checking to see if Robert had seen Jamie, and as soon as he ascertained from Robert’s unhappiness that she hadn’t made an appearance, he had seemed to lose interest.

“Don’t be fooled, Robert,” Callendar had said before waving him on. “Call me the minute you see her. Don’t approach her. She’s a vampire, and all vampires are dangerous. They have no conscience––and no soul.”

Callendar was wrong. Robert had lived with Jamie long enough to know she had both a conscience and a soul: more so than most humans, in fact. But he didn’t argue; he simply drove away.

#

Jamie had packed to leave town. Packing had consisted of putting one change of clothing into a backpack. She’d break into a business to get some money before she left, she decided, and she’d try to steal a car. It was time to go.

She’d seen Robert in his patrol car again on her way home from the thrift store. She’d barely hidden in time. It hurt to see him, to even think of him. No one had warned her that she could fall in love again––and with a human, at that. In fact, Horsham had intimated that it was impossible, that vampires didn’t suffer from such feelings.

It was clear she didn’t know anything about her own nature. She needed to find Terrill.

It was also obvious that she’d made a mistake in running away from Bend. At the time, she’d been confused, ashamed of what she was, afraid of hurting her sister, Sylvie. So she’d run.

Now, she intended to track down Terrill and ask him, as her Maker, to teach her. Perhaps when she finally understood who and what she was, and knew that she could control herself, she would return to Robert.

If he was still alive.

That was the worst part: to know that their time was limited, that their few remaining moments together had been taken away from them.

The same thought kept breaking through the hurt. Jamie thought it every morning when she woke up, and every night when she went to bed. She could Turn him. He’d become immortal, like her, and they’d spend the rest of eternity together. What would be so wrong about that?

But what if he didn’t want that? Would he curse her through eternity instead? Would she turn kindhearted Robert into a vicious vampire? She didn’t think that was possible, but what did she know?

It was wrong to Turn him against his will. She didn’t trust her own feelings, so, if the chance ever came, she’d have to rely on his.

#

It was nearly morning by the time Jamie was ready to go. She decided to wait one more day. The hideaway was safe and comfortable, and now that it was time to leave, she was reluctant. Robert was out there, looking for her, and somehow that thought was comforting.

She was about to fall asleep when she heard a rustling at the entrance. She thought about escaping out the secret back exit, but then thought,
What if it’s Billy or one of the others returning?

So she waited. After a minute, a young man poked his head into the clearing. At first, Jamie didn’t recognize him. He was so out of place and so distressed that he looked nothing like the smiling clerk from the thrift store.

“I don’t feel so good,” said Marc-with-a-C. “Please help me.”

#

Robert hadn’t slept in more than a day. With dawn breaking, he decided he’d go home and catch some sleep. Wherever Jamie was, she was holed up by now. Maybe he’d cut one of the pills in half and see if that helped with the pain without knocking him out for too long. The time was coming when the pain would be too extreme for him not to take his medication.

As he accelerated down the coastal highway, he caught a flash of silver out of the corner of one eye. He’d driven by the rundown parking lot a hundred times, and he’d recently noticed a shopping cart sitting there, but hadn’t thought anything of it. This time, as he glanced over, it seemed to him that the cart had been moved. He pulled into the lot.

As he drove up to the cart, he saw the hole at the bottom of the thicket of blackberry bushes for the first time. He held his breath and his heart seemed to skip a beat. The pain in his gut receded under a surge of excitement.
She’s here
, he thought.
I’ll bet anything she’s here.

He got out of the car and removed his gun belt. Whatever happened would happen. However she reacted, he would accept it. If Callendar was right, that she’d been pretending, that she was evil, then she’d kill him. So be it. At least it would end his suffering.

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the hole.

#

Jamie helped Marc up. She could tell at once that he’d been bitten. “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Billy showed me this place once. He brought me here on my birthday and they had a little party for me. I remembered you came in with Billy that first time.”

She put her hand to his pale face and felt despondent. He’d been a good man, and somehow, though she didn’t know how, she suspected that she’d brought this fate down upon him.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” Marc said. “I wasn’t feeling well; I passed out or something. I was talking to Stuart, and then… I don’t remember anything.”

Jamie flushed. It
was
her fault. Stuart was on her.

“I woke up and went home, but I wanted to…” Marc swallowed and stared at her in shock. “I wanted to kill her––my mother. To… I can’t believe… I wanted…”

“Shhh, shush,” Jamie hushed him soothingly. “But you didn’t, did you?”

“No,” he said. “I ran away. I kept running until I found myself here. What’s wrong with me?”

You’re a vampire,
Jamie almost blurted out, but she stopped herself. How do you tell a person that they have Turned, that they’ll never again bask in the sunlight, that they’ll be hungry for blood every day for the rest of their life?

Before she could speak, she heard someone else coming through the bushes.

“Go––over there,” she pointed to the chairs and tables on the other side of the enclosure. “Hide.”

Marc hid.

Jamie stood over the entrance, holding one of the kitchen knives. She looked down at the dull blade and wanted to laugh. Her fangs were so much sharper.

She recognized Robert from the first inch of him that showed––dark hair with strands of silver in it. She put down the knife and dropped to her knees at his side as he began to emerge. He looked up in alarm, then relaxed and smiled when he saw it was her.

What was I doing?
Jamie wondered when she saw that smile.
Why was I avoiding him?

She heard snarling and turned to see Marc hurtling across the enclosure, his fangs extended. She grabbed him in midair and slammed him onto his back. She stared into his eyes. “Stop!” she commanded, and he did. “Go to sleep,” she ordered, and he fell asleep.

She turned to Robert. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

Then they were in each other’s arms, and everything else in the world disappeared.

Chapter 33

“Come in with us, Jill.” Billy was almost begging. “I guarantee you a bed, and I promise no one will bother you.”

“Get away from me, Billy. I said no and I mean no. I won’t be shut up in some room with a bunch of bums.”

You’re a bum yourself!
Billy nearly said, but he knew that would be a mistake. To Jill, a middle-aged, formerly middle-class woman who still tried to keep her fingernails polished and saved and scrimped for real haircuts, she wasn’t a bum. She wasn’t homeless. She didn’t have a drinking problem. She just liked to camp outside with her friends.

“It isn’t safe out here,” Billy protested. “There are
monsters
.”

Jill snorted. “Yeah, what a laugh. That might work on some of the crazies in the next camp over, but I’m not buying it. Monsters… LOL.”

That was the other thing about Jill: every dime she managed to scrape up that didn’t go toward grooming, she put into her cellphone. Her kids, who lived far away in another state and, from what she said, probably didn’t care all that much about her, seemed to believe she was living in a nice condo.

Billy didn’t know all the homeless folks in Bend, not the way he knew everyone in Crescent City. He wanted to get back to his hometown, but he couldn’t leave Bend until it was safe.

Billy knew firsthand that the homeless were all too often the victims of violence. They were easy prey; sadly, sometimes they preyed on each other as well. Even worse, the local authorities didn’t take crimes involving the homeless seriously unless they resulted in death or dismemberment. Billy had kicked the alcohol––mostly––a few years ago, and after that, he’d taken it upon himself to save those he could. Most wouldn’t accept help from civilians, but from another bum? That seemed all right.