Rule of Vampire (17 page)

She remembered how hungry and confused she’d been when she’d first Turned; how she’d killed indiscriminately, putting herself in danger. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Horsham’s tutelage, she might have been standing in the middle of a field when the sun came up that first morning. She’d been that confused.

It was almost cruel, what she’d done through her inattention and inaction. It was time she started venturing out into the world again, time to find out what was happening.

“The cops come around here every ten minutes, it seems like,” Marc said, “which could be another reason folks aren’t coming in. Street people always think they’re in trouble even when they aren’t. I keep asking the cops what they’re looking for, but they won’t tell me.”

“Local cops?”

“Yeah, and a couple of FBI guys. Real scary dudes.”

Jamie had been there for at least half an hour, and unless Marc was really exaggerating, another visit from the cops could take place at any moment.
Time to get moving.

“I want to leave a donation,” she said, pulling out her last hundred dollars. She hadn’t intended to give the money away, but now that she was here, it seemed like the right thing to do. She felt strong, capable of taking care of herself again. If she was going to return from exile, she’d find another way to feed herself.

The pimply-faced girl was going to be
so
disappointed.

#

After she left, a slender young man with black-rimmed glasses came out of the dressing room, where he’d been listening to the whole conversation. He walked up to Marc, who turned around with a shout of surprise when Stuart tapped him on the shoulder.

“Jesus, Stuart! I forgot you were here!”

Stuart held up a long coat with a hood. “I’ll take this.”

“Sure. That’ll be five dollars.”

“No,” Stuart said. “That’ll be a hundred dollars.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll take that hundred dollars the nice lady just gave you. I’ll need it to buy gas to get out of this stinking town. And by the way… I’m really hungry. Sorry about this.”

Marc must have seen something in Stuart’s eyes. He backed away and pulled a baseball bat from behind the counter, then swung it at the advancing vampire, but Stuart barely felt the blow on his forehead before the blood started to heal him. It was too bad: Stuart had always liked Marc. But it was getting harder and harder to find any prey in this town, and he needed to regain some energy before he headed up the highway to Oregon.

Even when he was firmly in Stuart’s grasp, Marc kept struggling, but he wasn’t getting away: Stuart’s fangs were sunk deep into his throat. Still, he got hold of some scissors and managed to stab Stuart in the chest. That hurt, and Stuart almost ripped the spine out of his victim, but he held back.

As a favor to Jamie, he didn’t eat Marc. Let the nice vampire lady teach him how to be a proper vampire, if she liked him so much.

Stuart’s stolen Corvette was outside, loaded up with what few possessions he still wanted. He was leaving Crescent City forever.

Chapter 27

“What do you mean I can’t go outside?”

Slatter was the town drunk. He was also a bully: huge, loud, and constantly throwing his weight around. He was mean when he was drinking––which, until recently, had been all the time. He’d been fuming for days that as a vampire, he could no longer get drunk. Sober, he was meaner than ever.

The night before, he’d accidentally discovered that if he gulped down the blood of an intoxicated human, the effect was like the best drunk he’d ever had. He couldn’t wait for night to fall again.

“It’s against the Rules,” Hoss said. He was calm and measured and sounded like the adult, while the older and bigger Slatter sounded like an aggrieved teenager.

“What rules?” Slatter shouted. “We’re fucking vampires!”

“The Rules are for your own protection,” Hoss repeated.

“What are you, ten years old?”

“I’m thirteen, but that doesn’t matter now,” Hoss said.

“I’m not taking orders from some damn kid,” Slatter said. “You can just try to stop me.”

Pete and Jimmy had both stood up and were facing off with Slatter, but Hoss looked undisturbed. “All right, all right,” he said soothingly. “I’m not your boss; it was only a request. However, I’m going to ask you to carry one of our cellphones so that we can keep track of you.”

“It’s none of your business where I go!” Slatter snarled. Hoss’s giving in so easily had only emboldened him.
There is no way we’re going to control him now,
Jimmy thought.

“Please, Mr. Slatter. Take a cellphone. That’s all I ask.” Hoss leaned down to Jodie. “Babe, show Mr. Slatter where the programmed phones are.”

Jodie stood up and walked toward Slatter, who watched her appreciatively. She brushed past him, looked back, and smiled. When she walked out of the room, he hesitated, then followed her.

“Jimmy,” Hoss said. “Go with them.”

Jimmy went after them, not sure what was going on. He hadn’t heard anything about programmed phones, but Jodie seemed to know what was up. Jimmy had been angling to become Hoss’s go-to guy, but he’d seen Jodie and Hoss cuddling and whispering, so it was clear that he was no better than third in line. Pete was clueless, unaware he could have been in the running.

The first three rooms they passed through were full of vampires waking up from the day’s slumber. Jimmy caught up with Slatter and Jodie by the fourth room. Now the connecting holes were rougher and smaller, barely big enough to squeeze through. There were fifteen rooms in the motel altogether, but Jimmy hadn’t explored past the fourth room. In fact, he hadn’t realized the walls had been breached in the others.
What else don’t I know?
Jimmy wondered.

They went through room after room. “You sure you aren’t just trying to get me alone, girl? You want my body?” Slatter laughed, and Jodie laughed with him. Jimmy was starting to get a creeped-out feeling.

They reached the final room. The last two rooms had a real connecting door between them instead of a hole in the wall. They were the two biggest rooms in the motel, and inside the last one, Jimmy saw a small table with a pile of cellphones on it.

Jodie ushered the big man in. “Take your pick!” she said cheerfully.

“Whatever,” Slatter said, stepping inside.

She slammed the door behind him and locked it.

“What are you doing, girl?” He was pounding on the door, which shook under the onslaught. “You think you can keep me in here?”

“That door won’t hold up for long,” Jimmy said. “This is stupid.”

Jodie smiled at him and went to one corner of the room. There was a string dangling down through a small hole in the wall. She pulled on the string, and through the tiny aperture, Jimmy saw daylight flooding into the other room.

The cry that came from the next room wasn’t made up of words; it was a shrieking sound, rising steadily from a low bellow to a scream of disbelief and denial to a mindless wail. Even through the wall, Jimmy thought he could feel the sudden blast of heat.

The vampire in the next room seemed to be pounding on all the walls in turn, as if trying to punch through them with his bare hands. Then the pounding and wailing stuttered and weakened, and finally stopped altogether after one last whimper emanated from the death chamber.

Jodie went back over to the corner, and Jimmy saw that there was a second string, which she now pulled. The little bit of sunlight that was infusing its way through the hole disappeared.

Jodie didn’t even bother to open the connecting door to check the results. She turned and started walking back to the restaurant. Jimmy shuddered and followed her.

“You were in my seventh-grade health class, weren’t you?” she said casually, as if they were having a chat on the street. “I thought you were cute, but you were so quiet. You’re smart; I like that. Maybe not as smart as Hoss. Still, maybe we could, you know, hook up sometime?”

Jimmy was tempted, but…

“I think you belong to Hoss now,” he said.

When they got back, Pete looked at him questioningly. Jimmy supposed he was looking a little pale. He pulled Pete to one side. “You need to quit making fun of Hoss,” he said.

“What are you talking about? The little freak likes it.”

“Listen to me, Pete. You need to leave him alone. Quit calling him names. Treat him with respect.”

Pete fell silent as he studied Jimmy’s face. Then he said quietly, “What happened?”

Jimmy told him what he had seen––and heard. He was just finishing the story when Hoss called them over.

“So,” Hoss said. “Anyone else been giving us trouble?”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Jimmy said.

“We’ve got it under control, boss,” Pete echoed.

Chapter 28

“The infestation seems to be contained,” Callendar said to the first team of vampire hunters to arrive as backup. It was Feller and Abercrombie: the B team who thought they were the A team. Well, technically, they were ranked the number-one team, but everyone knew that was only because the real number-one team had a problem with authority. “There have been no new cases reported in forty-eight hours.”

“What was the infection rate?” Feller asked. He was big, beefy man who was serious all the time. Abercrombie, on the other hand, used a steady stream of quips and asides as a way to survive being attached to such a humorless partner.

“As far as we can tell, if the body was left untouched, a one hundred percent Turn rate.”

“Jesus,” Feller said.

“Jesus Christ on a crutch,” Abercrombie elaborated.

“We’re lucky this didn’t get out of control!” Feller continued.

Callendar nodded. How nice that the new guys were saying “we” now that the operation was a success. Undoubtedly, it would have been “you” if the operation had been a disaster.

“Everyone is accounted for?” Feller asked.

“No,” Jeffers said, annoyed. “We’re still finding bodies in the woods, washing up on beaches. Who knows how many have burned up? Besides, there’s a large homeless population around here, so it’s hard to know for sure. But there have been no new reported cases of violence.”

“The homeless move around,” Feller said.

“And around and around and around they go,” Abercrombie said.

Feller ignored his partner, as usual. “Did you think of setting up roadblocks?”

“We didn’t have the manpower,” Callendar answered pointedly. If these jokers had shown up a few days earlier, they might have been of some help. They’d rolled into town with a caravan of trailers and an army of techs. The state police had finally arrived as well. They’d taken over the county fairgrounds, where they were bustling about self-importantly, but not one of them had actually hit the streets yet or accomplished anything worth mentioning.

Then again,
Callendar thought,
if they had arrived earlier, they probably would have also tried to take credit.

“This strain is really virulent,” Jeffers said. “So all it will take is one surviving vampire to set the whole thing off again.”

“Speaking of which, did you find the vector? The vampire named Jamie?”

“Jamie the vampire?” Abercrombie echoed. “The vector vampire?”

Callendar saw Jeffers flush. Those two had been getting on each other’s nerves since the academy. “Dammit, Abercrombie! Will you shut the fu––”

“No,” Callendar interrupted, before his partner could say something he’d regret. “We think she’s left the area. But we also believe she’s a mature vampire who doesn’t leave bodies intact. It was apparently an accident that she let one of her victims get away. She was interrupted.”

“Accidents happen all the time,” Feller said.

“Yeah, you know: ‘Oops, I accidentally created a vampire,’” Abercrombie muttered.

“We need to find this Jamie and put an end to her,” said Feller. “We’ve been charged with the task of tracking her down while you two mop up.”

Mop up?
Callendar thought.
MOP UP?
He glanced over at his partner, who looked ready to explode. “Come on, Jeffers. Now that we’ve fixed things, let’s go get our mops.”

#

Stuart was roaring out of town in his stolen Corvette––the car had tinted windows, which was why he had chosen it––when a thought struck him. He pulled over as he reached Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. The huge redwoods were like a cathedral: a pagan cathedral that welcomed wild things, uncivilized and untamed creatures. Even through the shade of the giant trees, he could see that dawn was approaching. Still, he couldn’t stand to leave his hometown without making one last statement. He made a U-turn and headed back through town until he got to the strip of beachfront motels.

He’d followed the two FBI agents for a week, hoping to catch them off-guard. But the agents were always cautious, and every night, before they went to sleep, they put crosses on their motel room door and poured a line of what Stuart guessed was holy water across the entrance. He’d never caught them unawares.

Their room was in the middle of the second floor of the Comfort Inn. Stuart knocked on the door of the room next to theirs on the right. He put on a small smile and tried not to look like a vampire. To the room’s occupant, he hoped, he would appear to be a mild-looking young fellow, with black-rimmed glasses and nicely cut hair. A studious type.

A middle-aged man––his face sunburned, with a strange-looking white stripe on his forehead from where he’d worn a cap––opened the door, seemingly unsuspecting. “Yes?” he said curiously. “Can I help you?”

Stuart had planned to talk his way into the room, but dawn was only minutes away, so instead he rushed the man, threw him to the floor, and drained him of blood. Otherwise, he left him untouched. The shower was on in the bathroom, and when it turned off, he heard a woman humming.
Bonus!
Stuart thought. He opened the door and sank his teeth into the woman before she could turn around. At first glance she looked younger than the man, but even in her fright she couldn’t really move the muscles of her Botoxed face. When he was finished, he laid her carefully in the bathtub.