Rule of Vampire (3 page)

“Let’s go,” Sylvie said. “We’ll head down Highway 97. Stop in all the little towns. Ask around.”

Terrill nearly laughed. Finding a vampire in the dark was nearly impossible even when you knew she was there! But he just shook his head. “Let’s wait until we get a sighting.”

“Harumph,” Sylvie snorted, and walked off to the kitchen to prepare dinner––which was about the best response Terrill could have expected.

He went to the picture window and pulled aside the curtains. A black Escalade sat in front of his house, as if inviting him to come out.

So he went.

Chapter 4

The SUV’s door flew open as Terrill walked down the front path. There was a woman with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for him. She wasn’t smiling; she wasn’t scowling. Her face was carefully neutral.

“Are you looking for me?” he asked.

“Yes, Terrill. We need to talk. Get in.” Her voice was deep and mellow and hypnotic. He almost obeyed without thinking, but with an effort, he pulled back.

“Stop it,” he said. “I know your tricks.”

“Of course you do,” she said. She frowned, and it was as if the skin of her face was feeling the force of frown muscles for the first time, as if it was virgin territory. “You are a vampire.”

“I
was
a vampire,” Terrill said.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “Once a vampire, always a vampire.” The frown remained on her face.

“Oh? You’ve been following me for the last few days. How do you think I walk around in the sunlight? You’re close enough now to hear the beating of my heart, to smell the blood coursing through my veins.”

She didn’t answer.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

Suddenly, she became conciliatory. “I’m not your enemy, Terrill. I have nothing but respect for you and your views. In fact, I voted in favor of asking you to join the Council.”

Terrill didn’t trust this any more than he had her original no-nonsense approach. He just stared at her. For a moment, he had to struggle to remember what she was talking about. “The Council of Vampires?” he said aloud as the memory came back. He started laughing. That bunch of meddlers! He’d barely been aware of their founding and had pretty much ignored them ever since.

“Things have changed, Terrill,” the woman said. “My name is Clarkson, and I think you’d better listen to me.”

Something in her tone caught him short, and he stopped laughing.

“Get in the backseat,” she said.

To his surprise, he did. He didn’t think he’d been charmed, but he wasn’t absolutely certain. As the SUV pulled away from the curb, Terrill suddenly remembered that he was human and these were vampires, and he was completely defenseless.
How interesting that I’m not afraid,
he thought. He could die at any moment, but he felt calm, whereas all those centuries that he’d been immortal, he’d been afraid of losing his life.
How very strange.

“You may not know it, Terrill, but your Rules of Vampire are now the law among our kind, enforced by the Council,” Clarkson said.

“The vampires I knew would never stand for that,” he said.

“The vampires you knew are mostly dead, many of them at the hands of the Council. We’re no joke, Terrill, whatever you might think.”

How ironic,
Terrill thought. He’d first formulated the Rules of Vampire as a lark during World War II. Vampires had been disappearing at an alarming rate, so he’d tried to construct some guidelines for them to follow, to help them survive. But though they were called rules, they’d really always been suggestions:

Rule 1. Never trust a human.

Rule 2. Never leave the remains of a kill, or if you must, disguise the cause of death.

Rule 3. Never feed where you live.

Rule 4. Never create a pattern. Kill at random.

Rule 5. Never kill for the thrill. Feed only when necessary to eat.

Rule 6. Never steal in the short term; create wealth for the long term.

As if she could read his mind, Clarkson smiled. Again, the creases on her smooth face seemed almost unnatural. “We’ve come up with a few more since then, most of them just corollaries. All of them enforced, punishable by death.”

Terrill supposed it was possible. He had been in hiding for decades, living by a code that was even more severe than his original Rules, one that had made the Rules moot: he had refused to kill humans. He’d been out of the loop for a long time.

“You want me to join you?” he said.

“It has been decided by a vote of the Council,” Clarkson said.

“And if I refuse?”

She turned around in the front seat and her blue eyes sought his, making sure that he was paying attention. “You can’t refuse, Terrill. The Council has become all-powerful. Every vampire would turn against you––and those you love.”

They were pulling up in front of his house, and as the Escalade slowed, Clarkson’s eyes went to the kitchen window, where Terrill could see Sylvie whistling as she fixed dinner.

“But I am no longer vampire,” he protested. “Surely you can see that I’ll be of no use to you.”

“I’m sorry, Terrill. Truly, I am. But I’m afraid that if I returned and told the Council that you have miraculously turned human, they would be even more determined to have you in their power. You’d best return with me and make your case to the full Council.”

To his surprise, Clarkson let him get out of the SUV. She got out with him and stood next to him on the sidewalk. She was nearly as tall as he was, and her posture was impeccable. She might have been a Greek statue, pale and lovely in the moonlight. He glanced toward the kitchen window and saw Sylvie staring out at them.

“I would rather you came willingly,” Clarkson said. “I’ll give you a week. If you want to talk to me, I’ll be staying downtown at the Oxford. I hope you’ll make the right decision, Terrill. You…” Unbelievably, she blushed. “You’ve always been my hero.”

She got back into the Escalade and snapped an order at the burly driver, and they shot away.

Terrill walked slowly up the path. Sylvie was waiting at the door. She didn’t say anything; she just took him in her arms. She’d wait for him to explain if he wanted to, or let it go completely if he didn’t want to.

Later that night, it all poured out of him.

Chapter 5

England, 1250 A.D.

“I always called you a bastard, Terrill. I don’t know about the rest of these lads, but I never thought you were anything but a bastard. It’s not my fault if you didn’t take me seriously.”

Terrill stood in his soiled clothing in front of his resplendent friends, too shocked to move as they laughed.

“Tell you what,” Peter Martel continued, “if you want to buy us a round like you always did in the old days, we’ll let you sit down.”

The old days?
Terrill wondered. He’d been drinking with these fellows only the week before. He’d been one of them… or so he’d always thought.

“I’ve bought you drinks every night of the week for years,” he said in a dull voice.

“Indeed. Why else do you think we associated with a bastard?” Martel asked. Everyone at the table laughed some more––and then, worse, they started talking about the tournament as if Terrill wasn’t there.

The Tournament of Chalize. He’d shown up at the castle for his placement, hoping for an early joust, thinking he might be able to win his favor back by winning the grand prize. Instead, the local authorities had asked him for the papers proving his nobility.

“Papers?” he’d repeated, not quite understanding. “You know who I am.”

“No, sir. We do not,” the fat man behind the table had said.

At this, Terrill had backed away, stunned. He had stumbled over a wooden plank and landed on his back in the mud. And he had heard laughter: laughter from servants who, only a short time before, wouldn’t even have dared to look him in the eye.

Now, he turned his back on his former friends and headed over to the stable. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find that his horse, William the Conqueror, was no longer there. “The duke’s widow took him away this morning,” said the stableboy. There was sympathy in the lad’s voice, the first sympathy Terrill had heard since he’d been turned out of his lodgings the day before.

It began to sink in. He was a bastard. He’d always been a bastard, but he’d also been the duke’s only male offspring, so he’d been indulged and coddled all his life. Oh, he hadn’t been allowed to live with the family; the duchess wouldn’t permit that. But other than that inconvenience, he’d never been without privilege. More importantly, he was realizing belatedly, he had never been without coin.

The privilege had meant nothing. The coin had meant everything.

Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I plan ahead?
Terrill thought bitterly.

Because he had never had to plan ahead, he realized; he had always been provided for, his bad behavior always excused. He’d walked away from debts knowing that they would be paid.

Even as he thought this, Terrill saw big Jeremy walking his way with a grim expression. The officious fat man, the mayor, and his brethren on the town council thought they ran the town, but it was Jeremy and his thugs who really had the final say. Terrill didn’t wait around to see what Jeremy wanted. The previous day, he’d placed some large bets on certain participants in the tournament, knowing he himself was unlikely to win every event. Now, as Jeremy undoubtedly knew, he could never pay up.

Terrill ran.

He remained in hiding for weeks, doing odd jobs, even begging. He had no skills, he soon discovered. None at all––except drinking. His once-fine clothes turned to rags, his hair grew shaggy, and he began to stink. He slept in barns, sometimes even in the open.

The only people who would feed and shelter him were the very poorest of citizens, people he had once barely noticed existed. They lived on a plane below the servants, below the tradesmen, below the yeoman farmers. They’d always been in the background, bowing to him. Now they looked on him with sympathy and gave what little they had to share.

After one particularly wretched couple gave him some bread, Terrill broke down in tears. He’d been sitting by the side of the road, watching them with pity as they passed by, but it was they who took pity on him, giving him the last of their food. As they walked away, he buried his head in his hands and cried.

“What’s the problem, son?” he heard someone say.

Terrill looked up to see a man standing over him with his hand outstretched. He took the offered hand and the man raised him to his feet.

“Come with me, young man, and we’ll talk over some drinks,” the man said.

The stranger led Terrill to a tavern that was little more than four walls and a mud floor, and sat him down at a rough-planked table.

The man looked young––not a wrinkle to be seen––but he had gray hair and a gray beard. His eyes were bright, curious. He was dressed in the finest of clothes, but he wasn’t noble, Terrill sensed; instead, he was one of those men who had made their own wealth without the benefit of a privileged family. Once, Terrill would have looked down on such a man, but now he had nothing but admiration for the fellow.

Four drinks later, he was telling the man that. “I was a fool. I thought I was a nobleman when I was but a bastard. The only reason I was accepted was for my money. I wish I had it to do over again. I would give to the poor instead of the rich.”

The man––he’d said his name was Michael, but had given no family name––looked at Terrill intently. “I am in need of an assistant,” he said. “I’ll pay you well, and you’ll be fed and clothed.”

“I would be honored,” Terrill said.

They didn’t make it to Michael’s home that night. In the darkness of a country lane, Terrill sensed the man come up behind him. He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, and then nothing.

#

Terrill woke inside a dirt hole. There were planks over his head, and he could see sunlight through the thin cracks between them. He put his fingers through one of the gaps, and it was as if someone had cut into them. He yelped and pulled his fingers back. In the dim light, he could see that they were blackened, as if they had been burned. They certainly hurt as if they had been burned. He groaned, but after a few minutes, the pain receded and his fingers appeared to be healed.

Being stubborn, Terrill tried again, with the same results. So he stayed in the hole for the rest of the day, wondering if he’d been buried and left for dead, or if perhaps he
was
dead and the fire outside was hell.

When the light faded, he slid the planks aside and sat up.

Michael was sitting on a log a few feet away, and met his eyes.

“What did you do to me?” Terrill asked.

“I’ve turned you into a creature of the night, who lives on blood, who will burn in the daylight, whom God has forsaken, and who is shunned by mankind.”

How is that different from what I’ve been?
Terrill wondered.
Hiding at night, stealing from others, forsaken by all.
He accepted Michael’s explanation right away. For one thing, he could feel it in his blood: he wasn’t tired anymore, but he was hungrier than ever. It was no more disconcerting than finding out that he wasn’t a noble, wasn’t rich, but was a bastard and destitute.

“You will be stronger and faster than any human, but you must understand how to handle these new powers,” Michael said. “I will teach you the rudiments. It will be up to you to learn them––or not.”

Later that night, Michael led him to a pasture that contained a single, scrawny cow. “I purchased this for you,” he said.

Overwhelmed by hunger, Terrill fell upon the unfortunate beast. The savagery of his own behavior amazed him. He didn’t just suck the cow’s blood; he tore the animal apart, and he delighted in its pain. When he was finished, he looked over at Michael. “You purchased it?” he asked. “Why didn’t you simply take it?”