The Blood That Bonds (34 page)

Two wheezed, finding her breath. “Fuckin’
A.”

“
Can you run?”

“
Break as many of my
fucking ribs as you want, bastard. I can run.”

“
Then I think you had
better do so. Who knows? The forest
is
quite dark. Perhaps I shall lose
you.”

Two looked up at the smiling figure of death
above her, laughing to itself at this little piece of nonsense.
Abraham wanted a chase, that was all; a little action after so many
years without. Two knew it, and knew that her last chance was
rapidly expiring. She reached into the interior pocket of her
leather jacket, and brought out the only hope she had left.

White powder, some of it clumped with
moisture, some still dry. Heroin. Sam had found it in Darren’s
safe, and Two had brought it with her. She had no interest in it
now, not for herself, not for Molly, not for Tori.

But maybe for Abraham.

Two hurled the drug at his face, heard him
inhale in surprise, pulled herself to her feet, and ran for the
forest.

* * *

That drug, Theroen, more than any other, is
poison to our kind.

Abraham’s words, echoing in her brain as Two
had stared into the safe, at the bags of heroin Darren kept
therein. This was not the street grade junk he gave to his girls,
nor even the private supply of cleaner product he kept for special
occasions. This was uncut, raw, too powerful yet for use. Now it
coated Abraham’s lungs, his nasal passages, the ducts of his
eyes.

Two could hear him screaming.

Pain, rage, hate; Two heard the depths of
her own soul reflected back at her in Abraham’s voice, and grinned
with malice as she ran. She did not know if the heroin would kill
him, or only slow him down and give her a few moments more to live
before her tore her limb from limb. It didn’t matter. Nothing
mattered anymore, except the deep, black well of joy within her.
She had done damage to a god. She had hurt the thing that could not
be hurt. Two laughed as she ran, a maniacal cackle of glee and
hatred.

She slipped, slid, fell down a short, rocky
embankment, cuts on her arms and face, still laughing. Hysterical,
now, and barely able to run. Something seemed to stab her in the
side with every gasp. Two didn’t care. Her laughter came in gasps
and shrieks. Behind her, she could hear Abraham crashing through
the bushes. Roaring. Snarling. Two screamed obscenities back at
him, egging him on, daring him to kill her, laughing at his
rage.

The path led to a sheer rock wall, the
tangled underbrush on either side too thick to climb through. Two
skidded to a halt under the limbs of a tall oak, and looked around
in desperation. She was trapped. Behind her, she felt Abraham’s
presence growing. There was no chance that way, and no other
alternative. Death had come for her. Two turned, put her back to
the rock, and faced that death grinning.

Abraham staggered into the clearing and came
to a stop ten feet in front of her, his face twisted with hate. He
coughed, rubbed an arm across his eyes, wobbled slightly, and Two
knew she had hurt him badly.

“
You like it, fucker?” she
screamed at the figure. “How does it feel? You flying high
yet?”

“
I’m going to cut the skin
from your body in strips. I’m going to hang you upside-down. Keep
the … blood at your head. Keep you alive.” Abraham’s voice gurgled.
He turned to one side and dry heaved, broke into a fit of coughing.
There was blood on his face, and Two realized the heroin was eating
away the soft tissue of his mouth and lungs. Abraham swung back
toward her, and his eyes spoke now only of death.

Two beckoned to him. “Don’t
tease me, sweetheart. Do it.
Do
it!
”

Abraham lurched forward, moving at a
fraction of his former speed, unsteady in his step. Two unhooked
her machete and prepared for death.

Something dropped from the tree above, hit
Abraham with full force, and knocked him from his feet. Snarling,
screaming, writhing limbs. Tori. Two howled in triumph, racing
forward, raving, cackling.

“
Tori! What are you
doing
?!” Abraham’s voice
was weak. Confused. Its power was lost, and this more than anything
filled Two with hope. Tori was at her peak, energized by rage and
hatred, and the desire to protect her friend. Now was the time, yet
Two could not get a clear shot with the machete without hurting the
girl.

“
Tori, move! You have to
move!”

Too late. Abraham shoved forward, and threw
Tori from him. The vampire girl collided with Two, knocked her
backward, knocked the machete from her hand. Abraham advanced now,
still fast, despite the heroin. Tori got in his way, was knocked
aside, and landed hard. Two could hear the crack of her head on
rock from six feet away, like ice snapping on a lake in midwinter.
Two fell to her knees, scrabbling at the ground.

Reaching, searching, her eyes never leaving
Abraham’s advancing form. She felt the machete’s handle, clasped
it, and brought it up in a last, desperate arc. She swung the heavy
blade with all of her strength, screaming prayers in a nonsense
language to an indistinct God. Prayers for speed. Prayers for
strength. Prayers that it was not too late.

The blade caught Abraham just below the
chin, carving into the skin of his neck. For Two, it was like
chopping at stone. She felt pain lance through her arm as muscles
separated, tore, gave out, but did not draw back, did not stop her
swing. Abraham’s head separated from his body, flew up and backward
into the air, hit the ground rolling, and came to a stop by Tori’s
inert form.

Two rolled away from the headless trunk,
which stood for a moment as if welded to the ground. Great black
jets sprayed forth from the ragged stump of neck, and the hands
clutched at its sides as if searching still to tear Two apart. Then
at last like Goliath it fell, borne down by its own weight, and lay
still upon the ground. Abraham, the dark god, elder vampire of the
New World, lay dead.

* * *

Blackness overtook Two, and she lay on her
back for some time, covered in filth and blood, heedless of the
slush soaking into her clothes. Gasping, sobbing, calling out to
Theroen, Two lay on the cold ground until she at last realized that
Theroen wasn’t coming, and dragged herself to a sitting
position.

Tori.

She made her way to Tori’s body and bent
down, fearing the worst. To her relief, Tori’s body was already
healing, the flow of blood from the wound on the forehead slowing.
She was breathing in deep, slow, steady breaths. Two shook her
gently, and Tori opened her eyes. She sat up, groggy, and looked at
Two, then at the head on the ground, and broke into tears. Two held
her tightly, kissing her face, her hair, unable to believe they had
both survived it.

“
Oh, Tori. Oh, sweetheart.
We did it. He’s dead. Tori, he’s dead!”

They took the head back with them to the
house. Two wanted it nowhere near the body. She knew that vampires
possessed formidable powers of regeneration, and if someone had
told her that Abraham’s head could somehow reattach itself to his
body, she would not have doubted them.

They emerged from the forest together,
staggering, leaning on each other for strength and making their way
slowly toward the mansion, toward warmth. Two’s head was throbbing,
though she couldn’t remember hitting it on anything. Her right arm
felt as if on fire, every muscle torn and pulled. Tori shuffled
along, leaning against her, still dizzy and sick from the blow to
the head. Neither woman was capable of mustering more strength than
was necessary to keep their limbs moving.

The side door was locked, and so they made
their way toward the front. Two didn’t know what she would do if
that door wouldn’t open. Break a window, perhaps. It didn’t matter.
They needed to get inside. The mansion was hope where no hope had
been. It was warmth. Survival. Two wondered if she was crying. Her
face was too numb from cold to tell.

The front door opened with ease, swinging
wide, opening on the rooms in which she had spent the past two
months. Two made a choked, sobbing noise of gratitude and stumbled
inside, slamming the door behind her. She eased Tori down onto the
plush oriental carpet, and staggered to the entrance to the
basement. She threw Abraham’s head down the stairs, then bolted the
heavy oak door at their top.

The pain in her head and arm were making her
dizzy. Two stumbled forward into the first room she could see. The
media room. Melissa’s blood still stained the carpet, and Two
looked away. She struggled to one of the couches, fell down upon
it, and let black unconsciousness take her.

* * *

She woke in the early morning, the sunlight
still painful on her skin, and moved to a couch that lay in the
shadows. Here she slept the rest of the day, and into the next
evening. When at last she came out of her slumber, she found Tori
curled up next to her. Her head still ached, but only slightly. Her
arm was better, though still painful to move. Two felt very human
indeed, and wondered if her regression to that form had been
hastened as she had healed.

She sat up, looking around, trying to
determine what hour of the day it was. The media room’s windows
were dark. Two could see smears of dirt in the hallway, and
realized that during the day, Tori had dragged herself into the
front closet.

“
Smart girl,” Two said. She
turned on one of the televisions. Sights and sounds flashed by,
news reports on things she didn’t care about. She flipped channels
and found a cable access station broadcasting the time and
date.

Near midnight, mid-December. It would be
Christmas soon, the television informed her. Had she done her
shopping? To Two it felt like she had lived ten years in the course
of the past two months. She turned off the TV and stood on shaky
legs. She was starving, but not for blood. What she really wanted
was a cheeseburger. This realization made her laugh, even as tears
sprung to her eyes.

Two made her way upstairs into the room she
had shared with Theroen. Her clothes were still there, in closet
and dressers. Bathroom supplies, books of poetry, it was as if she
had never left. Two thought of Theroen, lying next to her on the
bed, and the ache in her heart leapt to the forefront.

“
I could kill you a
thousand times, Abraham, and we’d never be even. You took
everything I had.”

Two went to take a shower.

* * *

They lived at the mansion for six weeks, and
in that time Tori began to show definite signs of returning to
humanity. Christmas came and went, the New Year began. Two and Tori
healed. As her mind changed, Tori began to behave in new ways. She
mimicked sounds, and was beginning to understand simple questions
that Two asked.

She was still strong. Still fast. Two
wondered if the changes that vampirism had made to the girl’s
physiology would every truly leave. She wondered if Tori would ever
fully regain her mind. She didn’t know.

There were only two moments of
unpleasantness left for Two during her stay at the mansion. The
first occurred early: the burning of Abraham’s remains. Two had
taken care of the head first, out in the yard, dousing it with
gasoline and covering it with kindling. She’d taken the machete to
the skull, blackened and cracked by the flames, and scattered the
pieces around the grounds. She’d repeated the process with the
body. If Abraham could somehow heal himself, it was beyond her
power to do anything more to stop it.

The second occurrence came a week later.
Exploring the mansion, she had come upon a staircase, behind a set
of iron doors at the back of Abraham’s study. The stairs led to
depths deeper even than the basement in which she had found
herself, that first night after meeting Theroen. Two had ventured
down into the dark and foreboding space with trepidation, holding
nothing more than a single flashlight.

The sight upon reaching the bottom had
forced a cry of despair from her lips. There, on a stone bier, lay
her lover. Theroen, pale and broken, was spread out on the slab.
His body had been cleaned and dressed in a dark suit. It appeared
as if Abraham had been preparing to perform some sort of ceremony.
Two had run across the room, bit into her left wrist hard enough to
bring blood, barely aware of the pain, and held it above Theroen’s
open mouth.

Nothing.

Crying, begging, Two held her neck against
his lips. They were cold and dead. Theroen did not move, did not
change, and Two wrapped her arms about the corpse and wept.

She knew that she could not bring herself to
burn Theroen, and so left him there, climbing the stairs and
closing the doors, piling objects in front of them. Stone statues,
marble tables, anything heavy. Tori helped her move them.

Two hoped Theroen had found peace. She hoped
he was somewhere with Lisette, loving her, telling her stories of
Two and what fun they would have whenever Two finally joined them.
She wondered if she had the strength to go on without him, and
could not find an answer.

She wondered if some night she might awaken
to find a vampire hovering above her, eyes like fire, bringing
retribution for Abraham’s death.

She wondered if any of it even mattered.

* * *

Chapter 7

The Search

An apartment in SoHo. Fifteenth floor.

“
One fish … Two fish …”
Tori read haltingly, struggling with the words, anxious to please.
She looked up at Two, frustrated. “This is hard, Two! It’s
hard.”