Blood Reaction A Vampire Novel (12 page)

“Now it’s your turn. What about the rest? What happened to them?” I asked, desperately wanting to know. “You said you killed them all.”

Leaning back against the trunk of an old oak tree in the dark, he now had all the appearances of a vampire. With his pale skin that stood out in contrast to the dark of the night, he looked slightly eerie. His eyes looked almost empty they were so dilated, and his mouth, so red in the lighting of my house, looked dark in the night, giving him a very leering smile.

“Yes,” he nodded slowly, “all five of them. My first was a young man, an attorney. I was crueler to him than the others. I think it was my great jealousy at his station in life, the same one that was robbed from me. He broke under the stress within the first two nights and tried to escape.”

He laughed a low menacing laugh and rubbed his hands through his hair before continuing on. “He went during the day and I had to track him. This was before automobiles so it only took four hours, but I was furious. So furious that I took my time with him. He did not die well, which was good for me. I needed the release.”

Anxious to try to learn something from his previous conquests, I settled back into the hard curve of a rock and listened.

“My second was a woman. Beautiful and delicate the way wealthy women were back then. It was the 1880s. I found her along a small river in Louisiana. She had slipped out of her father’s house for a moonlit dip one summer night with her young man. Unfortunately for her, I beat him there. I did not bother to wait around for him. I will never forget her pale skin, nearly as pale as mine, against the dark blue of her satin gown. There was nothing she could really teach me; I just wanted her. I carried her back to a crypt where I had spent a few nights. I promised not to kill her suitor if she would cooperate. And I kept my word; I did not kill him, although he probably would have preferred it. I remember seeing a picture of him in the paper, he swung for her death.

“I tied her up and gagged her just before dawn every day. She was perfectly safe in the crypt, but I came back after the first evening to find her babbling. Her mind never came back so I snapped her neck a couple of nights later. Her blood was still good though. The madness had no affect on the taste.” He paused here with an amused expression on his face.

It was all I could do to not choke at his last words. He was definitely superstitious. That poor girl. I could commiserate with her terror. At least I was trapped in my own house and not some wet, rat-infested crypt.

It was getting chillier now and even my low-grade fever couldn’t keep me from feeling it. Noticing for the first time that he was wearing a jacket, I looked at it enviously, my own jacket forgotten in the car.

“Can you feel the cold?” I asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“It does not feel cold to me, but I can detect the change in temperature,” he answered back.

“Then why do you wear a coat?” I turned to look back down at the valley below.

“That is a foolish question, Annalice. Why wear clothes at all? Except to fit in, of course. I would look odd, do you not think, if I were dressed inappropriately in February?” For once, his voice didn’t hold complete contempt even though his words did.

Leaning forward, he slipped his arms out of his jacket and handed it to me. “I can see that you are cold.”

I reached for it willingly as I was starting to get pretty chilly. “How chivalrous of you,” I murmured quietly, sliding it over my shoulders and pushing my arms through the sleeves. It was fairly large and I pulled it tightly around me. Looking up at him, I caught a quick flash of anger on his face, but then it was gone just as quickly.

“Not to let you think that I am being kind, I just do not want you to catch your death of cold. I would much rather deliver it myself.” His voice was like silk when he said it, but was it possible that I had just seen a moment of actual kindness?

“So tell me about the third,” I asked, trying to get him back on subject.

“Again you are really very morbid,” he noted, turning to face the view from the mountain. “Of  all the humans I have  kept, I will admit that you are the most entertaining. The third was another young man. It was somewhere around the twenties to thirties. I was in Oklahoma. Cars were not quite common yet and the Great Depression was going on, so the law was lax and drifters were so frequent that no one looked at me that peculiarly when I walked the night. I had been traveling most of a month, going nowhere in particular, when I came upon this small ranch one evening sometime after midnight. It was owned by this very handsome young man. He was not wealthy, but not poor either. A very eligible bachelor during that time period.

“He was gone when I arrived and I helped myself to his bath while he was out. You should have seen the look on his face when he stepped into his bedroom and found me lounging on his bed. I played with him for a while, letting him think I was mortal. He fought quite admirably. He pulled a gun and shot me, at which point I fell down. I am a pretty good actor when I want to be and I let him walk up on me. I kept my eyes open and kept perfectly still until he leaned in over me. I am sure you can imagine what happened next.”

I looked over at him when he stopped talking. I most certainly could imagine what had happened next and in my mind’s eye, I could see the look on the man’s face when he realized his shot may have been true but his reality was not.

“How long?” I asked quietly.

He shrugged. “Just a few days. Long enough for him to teach me how to drive, use the telephone. Things like that, you know, the necessities of the time.”

The light breeze picked up slightly and chills raced across my skin, which was burning up now with a raging fever. My head and throat ached from the viral process and every joint in my body throbbed with pain.

“What did you do to him?” I asked, not because I wanted to know, but it would keep my mind off the pain and might help keep me resolved to see this through to the end. No matter what that might be.

“Why do you want to know? How does it help to torture yourself like this?” His exasperation was obvious in the tone of his voice.

“You say you don’t care so why do you mind telling me?” I retorted, just as irritated.

He laughed bitterly now. “How correct you are. Fine. He begged for mercy, but that is just not in a vampire’s character.” He paused now and my breath caught in my throat.

“Breathe, Annalice, I did not torture him. He was obedient to our agreement so I showed him what mercy I was capable of, which was to kill him quickly. I drained him and buried him in the hills of his homeland. Torture affects the taste anyhow.”

“But not enough mercy to spare him? He couldn’t have hurt you. Do you realize that?” I asked, unable to keep the emotion from my voice. I could picture all of these poor people just like me and I was angry for all of them. I hurt for all of them. The loss of their lives and now mine seemed terribly unfair. His low voice broke the train of my depressing thoughts and despite how badly I felt for his prior victims, I couldn’t keep from turning my attention back to our conversation.

“You humans come closer to finding out the truth behind every mystery each year and with those truths, the power to do something with the knowledge. I cannot chance letting anyone know of my existence. That is just the way it is. Surely your analytical mind can understand that.”

Despite how much I wanted to deny that truth, I couldn’t. If I were him, I wouldn’t want anyone to know about me either. But I hoped that I wouldn’t become the monster he had let himself become.

“Yeah, I guess I can. I can’t say that I understand why you need to kill them. It’s your decision to spend time with them and let them know what you are. You could get the same information by pretending to be human and developing relationships that don’t end in their death,” I answered, trying to keep my voice calm and even since I suspected my words were a little inflammatory.

“You hypocritical human. Humans drone on and on about being accepted for what you are, including all of your faults and flaws, but you extend the same courtesy to no one else. Your governments even try to rewrite history to hide the evil that your race has committed and you judge me for wanting a few meaningless humans to really know who I am, what I really am!”

His voice was razor-sharp with anger brought on by my answer. And although I didn’t move for fear that my slightest movement would put his rage into action, I couldn’t control my tongue.

“I don’t answer for all of humanity. I answer for myself and take responsibility for my own decisions. It seems that you should do the same.” I half expected not to finish my sentence before he ripped my throat out, but to my surprise he simply sat there, listening.

“Responsibility is a quaint human concept that no longer applies to me. I am not a human. I am a predator and predators do not question the need to kill. We simply do it.”

I didn’t say anything back to him after that for quite a long while. Honestly, my fever was too high and I felt slightly nauseated. That along with the ache in my bones kept me silent. I had no idea what kept him silent and, honestly, I just didn’t care so long as he was.

Leaning back again into the crook of the tree, I stared off into the view from the mountaintop. Small pinpoints of light could be seen scattered throughout the mountains and off in the distance, groupings of lights representing the small rural towns could be seen trailing through the mountains, until ending in a bright area representing the city we had been heading to when we stopped at the country store.

I watched the lights now starting to glitter slightly through the fog that was developing in the valleys below. It was beautiful up here and I couldn’t convince myself to leave. The thought of going back to my prison made me feel even more ill deep down in the pit of my stomach.

“Fifty years ago, that valley would have been darker than the night at this time. I would have never dreamed it would have become this popular.” His voice coming from the darkness and combined with his stillness seemed disembodied and it startled me. It was the first time he had offered information without me begging it out of him.

“What became this popular?” I questioned. My curiosity was really going now and I looked at him intently.

“Electricity. I still remember the first time I saw it. I had gone to the World’s Fair in Chicago and these brilliant lights were strung up through a village that had been built inside the fair. Back then, the lights had more of a golden color and they were beautiful. Looking back on it, I realize the lights were not as bright as I remember, especially compared with the lights of today. But at the time, they seemed like a miracle to me, but terrifying as well. I realized the potential of humanity that night. You should have seen the inventions, the Ferris wheel, the Tesla Coil!”

Hard to believe that he was offering this much information willingly, I listened intently and despite myself, couldn’t help but be fascinated.

“You should have seen it, Annalice. You probably can not possibly imagine in the great age of technology that you were born into how amazing electricity was the first few times I saw it. It was like seeing the sun again for the first time in thirty years. I was a little afraid that those miniature suns might burn me, but after I realized they were not that strong, I could almost feel hope again. Not hope that I would ever fit into the human world, but it did seem almost possible that I might at least have a daytime.

“And the Ferris wheel. I stood under it looking up at it for at least a solid hour. Each time it turned, I kept expecting a human to fall to their death, but it never happened. Spinning around and around, effortlessly and never tiring. That single machine was more amazing to me than the steam engine had been when I was alive. Everyone there was shocked to see it. It was massive. I finally dragged myself away from it.”

“What happened to your hope?” I asked quietly from my position against the tree. When he didn’t answer me immediately, I tried to be patient hoping he was just coming up with an answer.

The silence lasted for several more minutes before he finally answered. “The Tesla coil demonstration. That was truly terrifying. I could feel the current deep down in my core. It was like my entire being was vibrating with it. Any creature that could build that was dangerous by definition and I was right to fear them.”

He was again silent and I tried my hardest to relax against the cold surface behind me. The trunk of the tree was scratchy and I could feel it even through the coat he had given me. It seemed my nerve endings had doubled in number or their ability to sense. My skin was still burning and overall I just felt unwell. It was like having flu on steroids and my feeling of unwellness had significantly worsened throughout the course of the night.

His voice continued on in the darkness, “I was so scared and angry of what you humans could accomplish. And knowing I would never truly be a part of that world ever again, I left and spent several days in the ground. Did not bother to come out. But when I did finally emerge from the dirt, I was even angrier. I killed many humans for several nights. Mostly men and slowly. I wanted them to suffer. I guess because I was so outraged at the men who had created the machines I had marveled at a few nights before. I had realized the true threat of humans for the first time.”

He went silent then, and resting my head against the tree, I stared at the stars, mesmerized by their beauty despite how bad I felt. Not moving, I just rested, no longer interested in conversation. I had heard enough of death and murder.