Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Terror (55 page)

I laughed. “All you need to be royalty in this country is money, and Father always had plenty of that.”

Our father got his money the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. And despite his talent for waste and alienating other people, he did have a certain knack for playing the stock market, and he started out life with enough capital to keep the cash flowing in.

“No, I mean we’re
actual
royalty,” Lady insisted. “Father showed me the documents. We’re the most direct descendants of Duke Louis de Calvados Castaigne. You’re even named after him. Alfonso the Third promised he would rule over New Spain once it was reclaimed in the name of the King.”

She pulled off her ring and showed it to me. “See? Our father inherited this. It bears the sign of the King.”

I paused, not sure how to respond. “But that whole reclaiming thing never happened, did it?”

“Look around,” she said. “Who rules the land now?”

I shivered.

A
fter a sleepless night in which I thought way too much about Gun and Bear and the stillborn baby, we rode on for my parents’ house in Mill Valley. The morning sky was a flat, gray-yellow expanse, and the air smelled of sulfur. Xinantecatl was blowing ash down in Mexico. The new eruptions of the long-dormant volcano started a few months before the first vampire attacks were recorded, and so some people claimed that the mountain had released the ancient, parasitic race from hibernation deep in the rocks. I didn’t know if the tale was true or not, but the coincidence was compelling. People told all kinds of stories about the vampires. Some folks claimed NASA brought them back from Mars. Ultimately, their natural history didn’t matter. Staying alive did.

The highways were holding up pretty well considering they hadn’t had any maintenance in two years. Everything seemed pretty well deserted, even the parts of Los Angeles we traveled past. I’d braced myself to have to flee from roving paramilitary or urban gangs, but the city was a ghostly expanse of silent concrete, decaying buildings, and weed-eaten blacktop. San Francisco was nearly as desolate, although I glimpsed a few figures hurrying to duck into buildings or behind vehicles when we approached.

It occurred to me that I might have single-handedly wiped out a double-digit portion of the remaining human population in Arizona, and I didn’t feel very good about that.

We got to the house shortly before sunset. The roads leading up to it were choked with vines and ferns, but everything inside the tall iron gate was pretty much as I remembered it. The rolling expanse of lawn was weed-free and freshly mowed. I could even see the lights of the dining room chandelier.

“I’ve kept the place up,” Lady said as she punched in her security code. The gate creaked open. “Me and a couple of the servants, anyhow.”

Servants. That used to be a normal thing for me: living in a house with a butler, a couple of maids, and a gardener. Some of the people I related my story to shook their heads and told me that I was crazy for walking away from so much money and privilege and choosing to live in a world where spilled Tylenol mattered, but I was miserable in Mill Valley. I could remember happiness in my life: it was with Joe, before something bit him in the dark.

She saw me gazing at the chandelier. “The solar panels cost six figures, but they were an excellent investment; we were off the grid well before the King awoke his minions.”

“That’s good,” I said absently. My sister’s talk of the King was starting to get on my nerves. She’d always been a little strange, but now I was starting to wonder if she was delusional. Still, her eyes
were clear of jaundice, and the house looked fine. I knew to stay on my guard—I was
always
on my guard—but I was pretty curious about what my family had been up to since I’d been gone.

We rode up the long driveway and parked our bikes in the circle around the bubbling marble fountain; Father had it imported from somewhere in France.

Lady eyed my gun belt and the machete I wore in a leather sheath strapped across my back. “You don’t need those in the house.”

“I’d feel naked without them.”

She shrugged, smiled dreamily, and knocked on the front door. Our old butler Mr. Yates answered and escorted us inside. He didn’t look much different than he did back when I still lived there. The inside of the house was bigger than I remembered, and all the marble and mahogany and brass fixtures were burnished to glossy shines.

“This way, gentle ladies,” Yates said. “The rest of the family is gathered in the parlor.”

We followed him back, and he pushed open the double doors. My father sat in his favorite easy chair. My mother stood behind him, and my aunt Hilda and her grown children Constance and Archer sat on the sofa nearby, drinking tea from bone-china cups.

My heart soared, and I forgot my old hatred of my father. The whole family had survived? It was nothing short of a miracle.

“Welcome home, Louise,” my father said.

But then Yates moved off to the left . . . and I caught a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye.

Instinct took over before I had a chance to think. I drew my machete and swung at the elderly butler. My blade met its mark and the vampire scrambled back, shrieking and hissing, clutching its severed wing.

“No!” shrieked Lady, cowering away from me.

At that point I’d glimpsed the rest of the family sidewise, and what was still human in me wept while I drew the .38 and started pumping hollow-points into everything that moved.

A huge vampire flapped toward me, its wings yellow tatters, the gunshot wound in its leg dripping ichor like amber sap. “Explain yourself!” it boomed in my father’s regal voice.

I danced aside like a matador, met it with the machete, and took its head raggedly off.

And when it died, the house around me changed. The light sconces glowed not with electricity but guttering oil lamps made from old cans; I recognized the smell of burning human fat. The brass was green with corrosion, the windows shattered. The fine couches were torn and stained with blood from a hundred victims. What I had taken for plush, clean carpet was a matted pile scattered with human remains, and in the dimness beyond, I saw the gleaming eyes of dozens of vampires huddled against the walls.

And I realized I could hear them whispering,
The princess is dead . . . long live the Queen . . . the Queen . . . the Queen.

Lady was on her knees, weeping. She still looked human enough, but her yellow dress was ragged, her hair thin and tangled, her eyes dull and uninteresting. The only thing upon her that retained its previous luster was the golden signet ring.

I pointed at her with my ichor-stained machete. “Why? Why did you do this?”

“You were the firstborn,” she sobbed bitterly. “I couldn’t be Queen while you lived. I
couldn’t
.”

I almost asked “Queen of
what
?” but I saw the clustered vampires and could hear their whispers all over the house. They
feared
me. More than that, they respected me. I had a power I’d never asked for and surely didn’t want. But it might come in handy anyhow.

I stared down at her. “And you brought me here . . . to die? So you could be Queen?”

She nodded. “Yes. I only ever wanted to serve the King and now I can’t.”

“But you saw what I did at the clubhouse.” I shook my head, still not able to wrap my mind around what she’d tried to do. “You
saw
what I’m capable of. You could have made me leave my weapons outside but you didn’t.”

“They were just
people
.” Her tone was supremely dismissive; she was her father’s little princess, all right. “I didn’t think you could hurt the family.”

“Why do they need a human queen?”

“To lead them to new prey.”

I almost said, “I’ll never do that,” but I suddenly realized my will had nothing to do with it. I could hear their whispers because my brain was connected to the hive-mind now. The vampires could see through my eyes, hear through my ears. The moment I found survivors, friendly or not, the hive would know exactly where they were.

And if I closed my eyes, I could feel the King watching me from someplace far away, a land lit by dark stars, a world the ancients called Carcosa.

“What happens when they run out of prey?” I asked, already fearing the answer.

She shrugged. “The servants will starve. And the world will be silent but for the wind in the trees and the waves crashing upon the empty shores, just as the King wishes it to be.”

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

“I can’t ever trust you again,” I finally told her. “I take betrayal
very
badly.”

“I know.” She sniffled, wiped her eyes, pulled off the ring, and set it on the stained carpet. “That’s yours now. I just ask that you make it qui—”

I brought the machete down on the back of her neck before she could finish her sentence. Her head rolled away into darkness. The
vampires chittered and gazed at me, waiting. I was useful to them, and so I could live. For now. For a price.

If I’d been a better person, I would have reloaded my pistol, put it to my head, and ended things right then and there. Done my bit to save humanity. But . . . I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just that I’d been raised to think of suicide as a sin. I had struggled so long to stay alive, and I’d once sworn to myself I wouldn’t die in my father’s house.

I rescued the ring from being drowned in the spreading pool of my sister’s blood and shoved it onto my finger. It felt as though it had been made just for me.

T
wo days later, I was back at the Freebirds’ clubhouse. I found Rentboy all alone, dragging bodies out of the shed to pile them in the field. It was cremation day. His pretty face and bare chest were covered in bruises.

“They beat the hell out of me when they got back,” he said, only looking at me from the corner of his eye. “But they let me live. And then they left. Said they couldn’t stay here no more and I couldn’t come with them.”

He heaved a dead woman onto the pile and turned to face me. Then just stood there, squinting, puzzled. “Beauty? Is . . . is that really you? You look . . . different. Where’d your scars go?”

I twisted the ring on my finger. “I’m a bona fide queen, did you know that?”

Rentboy was staring at me, mesmerized by my new glamour. What was that I saw in his eyes? Was it fear? Was it hatred? No. It was utter adoration. It should have made me feel uncomfortable, but I took it as my due.

I held out my hand bearing the ring, and he fell to his knees and kissed it.

“Do you pledge allegiance to your queen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you swear your life to me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good.” I made him get up. “Pack up the supplies. We’re going into the desert where nobody lives, and we’re never coming back.”

A
few minutes before he heard the sound, Carter became convinced that the trees were following him.

He’d been walking from the Edgefield Hotel toward the town of Troutdale, just past the point where Halsey Street turned into historic Highway 30. The moon shone overhead, three-quarters full in a cloudless sky, providing enough light to see—not that he needed the illumination. Carter saw clearly even on the darkest of nights, and his hearing and sense of smell were equally hyperattuned.

A vast mountain range spanned the horizon to his left. He thought that the peaks might be related to Mount Hood, but he couldn’t be sure, and there was no one to ask. Nor could he pull out his phone and find out via the Internet, because both had stopped working months ago. He walked on, once again certain that the trees were following him. He heard them behind him, shuffling forward, tiptoeing on their roots. Every time he stopped and turned to glare at them, the trees stopped, too.

“I’m crazy.”

His voice sounded funny to him, and his throat was sore. How long had it been since he’d spoken aloud? He couldn’t remember.

“I’m crazy,” he repeated. “That’s all. And I’d have to be, wouldn’t I? Living alone like this? It’s enough to drive anyone crazy.”

He walked on, trying his best to ignore the trees. To his right was a field lined with rows of grapes. The unattended crop had grown wild. Vines, heavy with fruit, sprawled out into the road and snaked up trees and telephone poles.

The rustling sounds started again. He was sure they were real this time. He spun around.

“Stop following me!”

The trees didn’t answer.

Carter turned, stumbled over a pothole in the road, and winced as a jolt of pain ran through his leg. He’d broken it two weeks before, which was why he’d holed up at the Edgefield Hotel for so long. Before the epidemic, such an injury would have healed more quickly, but food had been in scarce supply, and thus, it had taken longer. Before the Edgefield, he’d last eaten in Seattle, and that had only been a starving, rail-thin feral dog—barely enough blood to sustain him and certainly lacking in the vitamins and nutrients he needed to effectively heal.

He’d spent a few days in Seattle, scrounging, before ultimately moving on, but the dog had been his only encounter. Seattle, like everywhere else in the world, had been emptied by the plague, its population reduced to nothing but bags of rotten meat filled with congealed, sludgelike blood. The stench wafting out of the city had been noticeable from miles away, and Carter had been certain that it would have been even to someone without his heightened sense of smell.

Unfortunately, there had been no one else left to smell it.

He’d made his way on foot from Seattle down into Oregon. Driving had been out of the question. The roads were choked with abandoned cars, wreckage, downed trees, and bodies. They’d cleared a bit in Oregon, but he’d continued walking anyway, because it made it
easier to hunt. He’d reached Troutdale and broken into the Edgefield, intent on sleeping through the day and then continuing on toward Portland that night, when a stray beam of sunlight had altered those plans. He’d been climbing a stairwell, listening to his footfalls echo through the deserted building, sniffing around and sifting through the thick miasma of dust, mildew, long-spoiled food, even longer-spoiled corpses, when the first light of the rising sun had drifted through a window and struck him on the arm. Flinching, Carter had recoiled. The next thing he knew, he’d lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs. He heard his leg break before the pain set in. Then, he’d lost consciousness.