Vamp-Hire (26 page)

He looked about twenty with soft brown eyes
and full lips. He closed his eyes like he was concentrating or
trying to remember something. The woman’s grip on his arm tightened
and he cried out again.

Her grip didn’t appear that tight even though
it was hurting him all the same. Nick realized it must have been a
Skill of some sort.

“Now. I have your attention.”

He raised his free hand toward her and it
stopped midair. She smiled at him, though it was anything but
happy. Cruelty lived in that smile. Whatever she was doing to him
must have hurt worse than the wounds from the chainsaw.

“Too much pain and he blacks out, too little
and he tries to fight. It takes a little effort to find the right
balance, but once I’m there he’ll tell me whatever I want to know.”
She looked at Nick, her eyes almost as inhuman as the creature’s a
moment ago. “What do I want to know?”

‘Brandon’ offered surprisingly little
resistance once they began asking questions. Kim turned his pain on
and off, increasing his agony in small increments when he tried not
to answer, dulling his pain when he cooperated. He’d begun crying
and Nick could only guess that it was because he was betraying
every confidence his group had held in him.

“Who do you work for?” Nick asked. He was
amazed that not only was he still not dead, his body had begun
knitting itself together.

“I work for no one,” Brandon said and his
eyes widened. Kim bared her teeth, and Nick recognized the fake
smile for what it was. “I walk the Road of Bone! I reside in the
City of the Dead!” he screamed.

“I didn’t ask you that,” Nick said. “Who do
you work for?”

Brandon held out for a beat or two longer,
gritting his teeth. How much agony must he have been in? After
being eviscerated by a chainsaw he’d still managed to stay as quiet
as a church mouse. Nick had heard the expression before, though he
didn’t really know if church mice were actually quiet or were the
loudest species of mouse.

“I work for him.”

“Who is ‘him’?”

More silence, then a sound like he was
choking. “He calls himself Cain! We don’t know his real name!”

“Kim, is he telling the truth?” She was tied
into his nervous system and could monitor things like heart rate
and brain function. If needed, she could feel what he felt or make
him feel anything or nothing at all. It would have been useless for
him to lie; she would have known before he opened his mouth.

One of the first things she learned was his
wound wasn’t immediately fatal. Probably crippling. Hopefully, Nick
thought. If he weren’t put back together properly, he would heal
the way he was and be two sections of body connected by an isthmus
of flesh about as thick as Nick’s thigh. He had seen signs of
Brandon’s body working to repair itself and noted the drawn-in look
of his cheeks and eyes. His body was cannibalizing itself to
survive.

“Yes.” She leaned in closer to him. “Who is
Cain and what does he want with us?”

“Not you,” Brandon whispered. She leaned back
and relief flooded into his eyes. “Him.” He looked at Nick. “He was
going to let us eat the rest of them.” He sounded almost pleased
with himself. Kim, surprisingly, didn’t give him another jolt of
pain.

“Great,” a man behind them said. “These guys
want to eat us now? What makes him so special?”

Nick also wanted to hear the answer to that
one.

“Not human like you.”

“What?” Nick said. “We’re all vamps here. All
of us.”

Despite his tortured expression, Brandon
managed a laugh that terminated in a coughing fit. Nick noted one
exposed lobe of lung that deflated and inflated violently until his
coughing eased.

“No. You are not like them. You are like
us.”

Nick regarded Brandon’s general bigness and
had no idea what his meaning was. He hadn’t gotten a good look at
the other two, but they’d felt bigger than average too—superhuman,
or super vamp. In all his interactions with other vamps back at the
Center there had never been anything particularly outstanding about
him physically, physiologically, or mentally.

Nick was absolutely confident that getting
cut in half with a chainsaw would kill him and had no desire to
test the bounds of his mortality.

Brandon pushed a loose ball of flesh hanging
out of him back inside. Sinews had begun to fill the huge gap in
the cavern of his body. Though still slow, it was much faster than
any human or vamp could accomplish. Nick thought if they left him
alone he might be up and walking in a few days’ time.

“If I can step in here before you go all
enigma-wrapped-in-a-riddle, what does that mean?” Kim asked. She
narrowed her eyes. “And I’d appreciate your slowest, most
detail-infused answer.”

Brandon’s back arched and he made involuntary
claw-fists with his hands. He looked like he was having a seizure
and Nick was about to put a hand to her shoulder to tell her to
ease up. He didn’t know if touching her would break her hold on him
or if touching her would subject him to what she was putting
Brandon through.

Her free hand was lying limp in the lap of
her blue jeans, the neck of her wrist swollen and bruised. Maybe
breaking her concentration would do more than hurt him.

Then the bridge of Brandon’s back eased to
the floor and he was still. He breathed for a full minute and she
let him.

“When I awoke, they gave me a name. I was
more fortunate than the others because I was never fooled into
believing I had been someone in the time before. I tried fitting
in… there was no place for me in this world. Until Cain found me.”
Nick thought he was trying to be evasive and was about to jump in
to keep Kim from hurting him again, then he continued. “He… made me
more myself. Showed me what true vampires were like. He has
promised us that they shall live again in us. We are tasked with
finding all of our kind to marshal an unstoppable army so we may
take our rightful place as the rulers of this world.”

“B.S.,” the vamp standing next to Nick said.
He had a widow’s peak and icy blue eyes. “He must be out of his
mind delusional. I mean, come on, how close is this guy to death?
He has to be hallucinating!”

“He’s not,” Kim said. Her tone was flat and
certain. “If he’s wrong, then he’s the same kind of wrong as any
other zealot who truly believes.”

“All right.” the man slapped Nick on the
shoulder. It felt aggressive to him somehow, threatening. “Then
what do they want with you? He said you’re not like us. What’s that
mean exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said, his feelings of
community being stretched to premature limits. He didn’t like the
vamp’s hand on him. “Maybe… maybe he means I’m different from you
in the same way a tall man is different from a short woman. Or a
cocker spaniel is different from a pit bull.”

In a blur of motion Brandon’s arms shot up
and grabbed Kim’s head. He wrenched and flung her aside before
flipping over and grabbing Nick’s leg. He struggled to get free and
a second later Brandon had his teeth buried in Nick’s shin. Nick
screamed and kicked at him with his free leg. The man next to him
joined in as well as a few others. The vamp held strong until Kim
sat up and calmly placed a hand on his leg.

Brandon pulled back, his upper body rigid.
People were still raining blows on his head, shoulders, and back,
but they may as well have been flies. His eyes rolled up in his
head and his breath caught in his throat. It looked like an
electric current was surging through his body. It took perhaps ten
seconds for whatever Kim was doing inside to kill him.

Pearlanne was suddenly behind Nick, forcing
him into a chair. She came to his side and rolled up his pant leg.
Two square-looking pink holes were in the side of his shin, leaking
something the color and consistency of rust-colored water.

“Somebody give me a belt!” she shouted.
Nobody had one. A moment later she had someone’s t-shirt and was
knotting it above his knee. Nick didn’t have the heart to tell her
it was already too late, in part because he hoped it wasn’t. It
could have been his imagination as he felt heat from the little
wounds radiating all the way up his thigh, across his stomach and
back, up to his chest, then finally into his brain.

“Thank you,” he said to her, the black
already closing in.

* * *

Nick woke up to someone slapping his face. He
opened his eyes and that hurt. He moved and that hurt. He moved
slower and it was still painful. Nick was covered in cold
sweat.

“He’s burning up,” someone said. Nick had no
idea what whoever that was was talking about. He was freezing.

Nick remembered passing out. That was the
second time tonight, which couldn’t be good. He tried to focus on
the person in front of him. That hurt too. It was the vamp with the
glasses. Nick felt like he had a whole body hangover. He had to
move, though. Those others had to have called for
reinforcements.

He tried sitting up and the vamp put his
fingers in Nick’s chest. It felt like he was being jabbed with four
red-hot pokers.

Nick didn’t ask what had happened, he
remembered it clearly. What he wanted to ask was what was happening
now. What was the poison he had been injected with? Was anyone
trying to get an anti-venom? Or an ambulance?

“They’re still outside, Nick,” the vamp with
the glasses said. “A few of us tried to leave and they were
attacked. They’re not trying to come in, though. We need you to
relax.”

“Is everyone… okay?” Nick thought he sounded
like an old man. His chest and neck ached from speaking.

He shook his head. “They killed Kevin.” His
eyes welled. “Tore him apart. We were lucky to make it back
in.”

He knew most of them were upset to be here.
They might be looking for someone with whom they could vent their
frustrations.

“Pearlanne?” he asked.

“Her.” The vamp squeezed water out of a paper
towel and applied it to Nick’s forehead. “She’s fine for now. If we
make it to sunrise, I don’t know.”

Nick didn’t know what was so significant
about sunrise. He made a face, hoping he didn’t have to ask the
question out loud.

“Those are vampires out there. I mean, you
cut one of them in half and he still didn’t die...”

Nick was pretty sure that wasn’t right, but
those had looked like fang marks in his leg.

“Anyway, once everyone saw her father and the
other one were dead, they kind of let up on her.”

Nick wanted to see what was going on. He
didn’t know if he was dying, and he didn’t want to wait around for
it to happen. “Get Kim,” he said. “It hurts. Tell her it hurts.”
The young vamp with the glasses nodded and stood. He walked away
and a moment later returned with her. She looked like she had been
sleeping or crying, maybe both.

“I would have helped you sooner, but Brandon
took a lot out of me. When I have to use that much effort it
totally zaps me.” She knelt and put her hands on Nick and instantly
he felt better.

“Am I hurting you?” he asked her.

“No. I don’t know how long I can do this,
though. I’m still kind of wiped.”

“I won’t need you for long. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Just get me out of
here.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Nick held onto her as he bent and checked his
leg. For as horrible as he felt he expected the bite to look angry
and infected. Other than a little trickling of blood it didn’t look
bad at all.

“We didn’t know whether to bandage it or
not,” the vamp with the glasses said. “It kept oozing that brown
stuff and we thought that was the poison or whatever leaking
out.”

“What’s your name?” Nick asked.

“Allen.”

“Thank you, Allen.”

“I’m Ray,” the tall blond said. He offered
his hand and Nick shook it. “I just wanna say thanks. I mean, we
woulda been toast if you didn’t take out that vampire with the
chainsaw. You are crazy, man!”

“Yeah, well, don’t look for a repeat
performance. Where’s the body?”

“Dude, we left him where he was. Nobody wants
to touch him.”

Nick made his way out of the small office,
back into the room he’d been in before. He didn’t know what this
place had been pre-Conflict and thought they were currently
underutilizing the space. There were several desks coated in dust
and a bank of cubicles by the far wall. Nick hadn’t taken the time
to look around earlier because he’d been too focused on Brandon.
Two sets of tracks were in the dust and Nick followed them to where
two man-sized lumps lay, covered in papers. That had to have been
Pearlanne’s father and uncle.

“Half of us might hate her guts right now,
but nobody wanted her to see them like they were.” Nick turned to
the wide-mouthed Hispanic vamp speaking to him. He was short and
had close-cropped hair and eyes as dark as night. He shuddered
looking at the bodies.

“Where is she?” Nick asked. The vamp
shrugged.

“Somewhere,” he said.

Nick made his way to where his body lay and
pulled away what looked like a mound of covers to word processors.
The upper half of Brandon looked peaceful, asleep on his back. He
looked seventeen or so and had an innocence to his face that was
sad. His legs were lying the opposite way, the column of flesh
between upper and lower twisted.

“Kneel with me,” he said to Kim. They got
down and he looked at the body. This had been a killer. Something
about him didn’t seem right, though. Nick felt more sure about it
being this close to him. It felt odd to pat down his legs. He
checked the pants pockets and found nothing. He thought about
reaching into the open cavern of his torso. No, that was too gross,
and what was he hoping to find?

Nick thought about the bite. Two holes like
he’d been bitten with fangs. Dolph had said it was impossible for
vampires to exist, some virus or whatever had wiped them all out
and it would remain in the air for years to come. If that were
true, however, then what had Brandon bitten him with?