Rule of Vampire (16 page)

“Hey, baby,” she purred. “You’re just as cute as I thought you’d be.”

Hoss took Jodie’s hand and led her to a chair next to his. Then he hunched over and started playing with his cellphone again, ignoring her.

Pete glanced at Jimmy and threw up his hands as if to say,
What the hell just happened?

There was another knock on the door, and when Pete opened it this time, a strange vampire was standing there. It was some guy he’d seen around town––the guy who rented kayaks down at the harbor, that was it. The blond hunk looked freaked out of his mind. “I’ve heard it’s safe here,” he said nervously.

“Let him in!” Hoss shouted. “I put the word out. We’re going to have guests.
Lots
of guests.”

#

The vampire was hiding in the basement of her own house. It was relatively easy to smoke her out. Callendar tossed in a tear gas canister and it bumped down the stairs. Then there was silence; then the hiss of gas.

She came screeching up the stairs and Jeffers shot her with a bolt from the lone crossbow they’d brought with them, a last-minute addition they’d tossed into the trunk on their way out of town. The girl, who looked to be about eight years old, tumbled back into the darkness. They waited for the gas to clear, then carefully descended the stairs.

Her parents were dead in the living room and had been partially consumed by the little vampire over the preceding few days. It was the smell that had alerted the neighbors, who had called the police, who had called the FBI.

The girl was dead at the base of the stairs, the bolt in her heart and her innocent-looking little face smashed into the concrete, her neck at an unnatural angle.

“Hey, have you noticed the vampire population boom is starting to slow down?” Jeffers asked, prodding the body sadly with one foot. “Do you think we got them all?”

“Doubt it,” Callendar said. “The strain is too virulent.”

They’d confirmed that it was a maliciously potent strain of vampirism by sending some of the blue blood to the FBI office in Portland. Uncharacteristically, the results had come back quickly. This was something new––or at least, something they’d never seen before. Anyone bitten who died would come back as a vampire if the body wasn’t too far gone.

Not so quick to respond were their backup squads from New York and L.A. There were only a few specialized two-agent teams like theirs, and they were mostly based in the biggest cities in the U.S. Vampires were relatively rare, and they were extremely good at hiding themselves and their crimes. They were also extremely dangerous and difficult to kill. A major task force was usually created for each identified vampire, and it sometimes took years to track down a single target, if they managed to do it at all. So the vampire hunters weren’t used to mobilizing quickly, and even though Jeffers and Callendar had warned their superiors––repeatedly––that this was an epidemic, they were still on their own.

In truth, they were both kind of glad that help hadn’t arrived yet. It was fun and refreshing to find and kill so many vampires in such a short time, from that first idiotic baby vamp who had challenged them on a public street mere minutes before dawn to the kegger victim who had looked at them with wide, innocent, trusting eyes as they put holy water in his IV.

Most of the other vampires had been equally easy to track down. What was surprising, even with a virulent strain, was that so many had been created, because even newly Turned vampires usually tried to consume their victims. Jeffers thought it was because the baby vamps were so inept that they were letting many of their prey get away. Callendar thought it was because these vampires thought they were only supposed to suck blood, because that’s what the movies had taught them.

In any case, the new vampires were untutored and unwary. And they were so strong and fast compared to when they’d been human that most of them didn’t believe they could be killed. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for Jeffers and Callendar, who had more notches on their crossbows (or crossbow, as the case may be) than any other team.

Jeffers is right,
Callendar thought.
We’re running out of vampires.

“We haven’t still found the vector of the infection,” Jeffers reminded him. “You know, Jamie––your brother-in-law’s girlfriend.”

“I suspect she’s long gone.”

“Well, Robert doesn’t think so,” Jeffers said scornfully. At first, they had assumed that Robert’s obsessive search was all about finding and killing the vampire who had deceived him, but after a while, it became clear that the cop was pining for his lost love. “Does he have any idea how dangerous vampires are?”

“Well, he lived with her for nearly a week with nothing bad happening,” Callendar said. “You know, over the years, we’ve heard rumors of vampires who don’t kill people. Urban myths, for the most part; but then there’s Terrill.”

“The biggest myth of all,” Jeffers said.

“I wonder,” Callendar mused. “There are so many stories, and the vampires themselves seem to believe them. Maybe it’s true. But I sure wouldn’t put my neck under the fangs to test it.”

They took the little vampire into the backyard and watched her burn in the sunlight. Live or dead, the blue blood was flammable under the direct rays of the sun.

Then they conducted the usual canvas of the surrounding houses, interviewing the neighbors. It was clear that the child hadn’t left the house since Turning. Her second-grade teacher had been Turned, but only this little girl had suffered the same fate. All the students were now accounted for.

For the first time since seeing Jamie in Robert’s living room, the agents had no more leads.

“What the hell is going on?” Callendar wondered out loud.

#

Hoss was holding court. Jimmy, as second in command, was gazing imperiously at the ten or so minions currently in the room. The motel was now completely filled with vampires, nearly two dozen of them in all, of all shapes and sizes and ages. Word had gotten out that it was a safe place for them to hide. They’d knocked out the walls between the motel rooms so they could move around easily, and most of them spent the daylight hours in the restaurant when they weren’t sleeping.

The first rule Hoss had insisted on, with Pete and Jimmy as his enforcers, was that no one was to leave without his permission.

His charges were getting more and more antsy, and he had expressed concern to Jimmy that he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to maintain control. But for now, as long as the hunting parties he sent out came back with fresh meat, most of the vampires were willing to listen to him. They’d seen too many others of their kind get snuffed out by the vampire hunters.

It had proven to be ridiculously simple to find a ready supply of fresh meat. It turned out that the cold of the ocean waters didn’t affect them, and they could hold their breaths for extraordinary lengths of time and could see a long way, even in the murky water. Even when one of them drowned, he simply needed to be dragged onto the beach, and in a few minutes he’d spew up water and start breathing again.

Best of all, practically no one noticed them. The few humans unlucky enough to stumble across them were added to the food supply. So they had a steady diet of seafood, and just enough human victims to keep most of them happy.

Hoss sat on a raised dais, in a large overstuffed chair that had been accidentally left behind when the motel had been abandoned. Pete and Jimmy were perched on barstools on either side of him. Jodie sat at his feet. Jimmy laughed at how it must look.
It’s like a Frank Frazetta cover on a Conan book,
he thought.

At first, the dais had been used because Hoss was so small that it was hard for everyone to see and hear him when he gave his talks. Later, it had seemed natural that he be raised up. Without meaning to, he’d become the leader of the vampires. Pete thought it was funny that the “little turd” was bossing them around, but they usually did what he asked. In fact, a bit of a power struggle was developing between Pete and Jimmy over who would be Hoss’s right-hand vampire.

“Why don’t we just kill the vampire hunters?” Pete asked. “There are only two of them. I bet Hoss could come up with a clever plan to trap them. Right, Hoss?”

“Yeah, right,” Jimmy said, trying to gauge Hoss’s reaction to Pete’s suggestion. “I’m sure Sitting Bull thought the problem was solved once he snuffed out Custer.”

Hoss just sat there thinking. He did a lot of that. He’d get an intense look on his face, then not hear anyone talking to him or see anything happening in front of him for a while, but when he finally smiled, he always had a solution to whatever problem was bugging them.

“Too many vampires,” he said quietly.

“What’s that, Hoss?” Pete asked.

Hoss looked up at them. The shrewd intelligence in his eyes made him seem like a 100-year-old trapped inside a 13-year-old body. Sure, he was slender and small for his age, but he projected authority. “What I’m trying to say is, we have too many vampires. There’s no way to control them. They’re bound to get us all killed. Whereas if there were only, say, a dozen of us, max, we could remain hidden.”

“So what do we do?” Pete asked. “Kick them out? Go somewhere else? Leave them behind?”

Hoss stared at them.

Jimmy smiled. “Well, Pete… you
were
wondering what vampire tasted like.”

Chapter 26

Jamie ventured out of the hideaway for a couple of hours every night. She’d find a small business to break into, steal what cash she could, and then go to the Burger King, where the same girl was waiting with a bag of raw beef for fifty bucks. The pimply-faced teen was getting a nice bonus.

Jamie had hit the jackpot on the third night, finding over three hundred dollars in the cash register of a clothing store. It only took her half an hour to walk to the hamburger joint, get her food, and scurry back to her new home. She didn’t want to do anything else. She just lay in the blankets and waited––for what? To die?

Easy to do––just crawl out into the daylight,
she thought.

But she didn’t.

One evening, she saw a police car approaching, and she hid behind an abandoned building and watched as Robert drove by. Her heart ached at the sight of him. He looked pale and wan, and she wished she could reach out and hold him. She almost stepped out under the streetlamp, almost let him see her, come what may.

But she didn’t.

She wasn’t sure what would be worse: that he’d reject her and arrest her––maybe even try to kill her––or that he would accept her back into his life. The second alternative was far too dangerous for him. It would be the end of his career, and the vampire hunters wouldn’t let her live peacefully with him. Even if they tried to flee, they’d be followed.

And yet… Robert was dying. Did it matter what happened to his career? Did it even matter what happened to her, as long as they could be together one more time?

She dreamed every night that he was lying beside her, and when she woke in the morning, she reached for him. And every time it happened, she had the same thought:
We could be together… forever.

Jamie wouldn’t Turn him without asking first. But was it so crazy to think that maybe, just maybe, he’d say yes? She’d convince him that it was possible to survive as a vampire and not kill anyone. It had been done––once. Terrill had gone for decades without killing a human.

Yeah,
she thought.
And how did that end?
Her own Turning was proof that even the most disciplined vampire could fail.

But if anyone can do it,
she thought,
it’s Robert.

As the days passed, Jamie got stronger. After a week, she ventured out late one overcast afternoon and visited the thrift shop where Marc-with-a-C worked.

He almost didn’t recognize her at first; then his eyes lit up. “You look great!” he said. “You look completely recovered!”

She hadn’t said anything about being sick, but she could understand his confusion. “Hi, Marc-with-a-C. How you been doing?”

“It’s been kinda slow, actually,” he said.

The big building was empty of people. Jamie realized that the last few times she’d visited, there had always been at least few customers browsing the aisles.

“I’m not sure what’s going on,” Marc said. “I mean, some of the street people usually head north this time of year. But some of the folks are here year-round, and I haven’t seen any of them, either. I wonder if they’re laying low because of the massacre.”

Jamie felt a chill. Since she’d run away from the two vampire hunters, she hadn’t thought about anything but losing Robert. Now the memory of the vampire attack in the woods returned in full force. She had smelled four vampires at the crime scene that night: Stuart and three others. At the time, because of what Horsham had told her about the difficulty of Turning people, she’d thought that was impossible.

It hadn’t been impossible: it had been a warning sign, but she’d been so miserable that she hadn’t thought any more about it. Now Jamie remembered the two vampires who had stolen her kill––Stuart’s friends. They’d probably been Stuart’s first victims.

“And then there are the others,” Marc was saying.

“Others?”

“Don’t you read the newspapers?” Marc asked, then looked chagrined. “Don’t answer that. I always forget most people don’t read the papers anymore. Anyway, there’s also a bunch of people missing. I’ve heard conflicting stories: a gang war over meth territory, or an epidemic of some new disease that they’re trying to keep quiet––or both.”

“How many are missing?” Jamie asked.

“No one knows, but I’m guessing quite a few.”

Again, Jamie felt a shiver down her spine. In a way, Marc was right. She
had
been ill––or at least, not thinking straight. This “epidemic” was her fault, clearly. At the very least, she should have checked on Stuart, and then taken him under her wing. Maybe if she had done that, none of this would have happened. Now there were at least four vampires running around town without any tutoring at all.