Blood of Gold (26 page)

He heard Jamie swearing as she pulled over for the cop car. He heard her talking to the officer, and then their voices started to rise in anger. “I don’t give you permission to search this vehicle!” he heard Jamie shout as the door of the motor home swung open.

The cop was huge, fat as well as tall, and Terrill sized him up as having muscles beneath the fat. This man was used to literally throwing his weight around. He stood there at the door, staring at Terrill and Sylvie for a second, then said, “What the… ?” and started to pull his weapon.

Jamie or Terrill probably would have gotten to the cop before he could draw his gun, but before either of them could act, Sylvie came flying off the bed with a banshee screech and landed on top of the policeman, who fell backward onto the road. Terrill heard a loud crack as the man’s head hit the pavement.

Jamie got to Sylvie first and trapped the wild girl in her arms. Terrill grabbed Sylvie’s kicking feet and they hauled her back into the motor home.

“We need rope!” Jamie shouted.

Terrill ran to the bench seats, threw off the cushions and started rummaging through the storage space beneath. His hands landed on some plastic rope almost immediately, and they soon had the screaming, spitting new vampire tied to the bed.

“Wow,” Jamie said. “Was I like this?”

“Probably,” Terrill said. “A little. Vampires have a saying: The stronger the spirit, the stronger the hunger.”

“Big surprise,” Jamie said, “little sister has a big hunger.”

They were both relieved, if a bit alarmed. “I’ll get the raw meat,” Terrill said. “You take care of the cop. If he’s all right, try to glamour him. If not, we’ll try to find a hospital.”

He almost couldn’t believe those last words. The old Terrill would have left the officer by the side of the road and thought nothing of it, or he would have eaten him.

As they fed Sylvie big chunks of red meat, Robert managed to get the policeman up and seated in his squad car, placating him with some cop talk. The officer was dazed and confused. When they finally drove off, he was completely convinced he’d been in a fender bender of some kind.

They got the caravan moving again.

Chapter 24

The small, dapper man Hoss had known as Combs was gone, replaced by a… by a demon. Hoss couldn’t think of any other word for it. He was a demon from the Pit, made of cold and darkness and pain. The humans had it all wrong: hell wasn’t filled with fire, it was empty, a void, a black nothingness.

Once transformed into the Master of Shadow, Combs never again appeared in bodily form. He was a void that blotted out anything and everything it touched. Fitzsimmons was his mouthpiece, and Hoss could sense the former Council president’s horror and humiliation at what he was being turned into, but also his savage joy in his new powers.

In a hollow voice, Fitzsimmons ordered the entire Council to board the private jet that the president usually reserved for himself. No one disobeyed.

Hoss and Jared and some of their allies, the young, tech-savvy vampires who had thought to overthrow the Council, pressed up against the wall, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. Fitzsimmons left the room, and Hoss let out a big sigh of relief. He turned to Jared, about to say that they needed to get out of there fast. Blend into the countryside. Be old-style vampires.

“You, too,” came an echoing voice from the doorway. All Hoss could see was a dark hallway, but he could sense the malevolent presence behind the darkness. “You’re coming with me.”

#

At the airport, more vampires appeared, as if summoned. The other two jets owned by the Council were also filled: every seat, every inch of the aisles and every storage unit and compartment, pressurized or not. There were dozens of vampires Hoss had never seen before. All of these new vampires had a mantle of darkness, an outline of shadow, a sucking emptiness around them.

They sat on the tarmac for an hour, even though by all appearances they were ready to depart.
What are we waiting for?
Hoss wondered. He looked out the window and saw Peterson approaching the plane, escorted by four large vampires who blended with the darkness outside.

Peterson stumbled into the plane, pushed from behind. He looked old, not only in appearance, but in demeanor. He didn’t look anyone in the face, just straightened his clothing and marched down the aisle to the front of the plane, where he sat in the last available seat.

The plane taxied for takeoff. Hoss looked longingly at the bright lights of London. A small-town boy he might have been, but in his heart, he was a big-city vampire. He suspected he might never see London again.

Fitzsimmons and He-Who-Had-Once-Been-Combs were together at the back of the plane, and it was as if the metal frame of the aircraft had disappeared back there and been replaced by a starless night, empty of oxygen, warmth and substance.

Hoss, Jared and the younger vampires huddled together near the center of the plane, silent, trying to be unobtrusive. Jodie sat next to Hoss, and perched in the seats in front of him were Jimmy and Pete.

At the front of the compartment, the other councilors were conferring. At first they seemed frightened, but as they continued to talk among themselves, they seemed to gain courage from each other. Hoss could see them regaining their confidence. These five vampires had been among the most powerful in the world. They’d always been more ruthless, more cunning, more savage than all their brethren.

In addition to Peterson, there was the big Dutch vampire, Belinda Hanson. She may have had a baby-girl voice, but that didn’t fool anyone. She was no pushover.

There was Jerome Bacher, the German representative, who came from a district that had long been infested with vampires––yet he had risen to the top.

There was Isaac Hargraves, who looked like a small boy, but was perhaps the most devious of them all, a survivor who used his appearance to seem harmless while he manipulated those bigger and stronger than himself.

And there was Bogdan Kovalev, from Russia, who had survived decades of police state and a kleptocracy, and was richer and more powerful in his homeland than any of them.

Overnight, all their power had been stripped away.

Only Peterson stayed out of the debate, merely glancing over at them with dull eyes whenever they asked him something. They spoke in tones so low that even vampires a few seats away couldn’t hear them, but no one had to hear anything to realize a conspiracy was being hatched.

Hoss looked nervously over his shoulder at the darkness that enveloped the back of the plane. He could barely make out the form of Fitzsimmons sitting there, facing forward, unmoving. The rest of the darkness was lifeless, implacable.

The argument among the councilors became heated. It appeared that Hanson was insisting on something, while Hargraves was still in doubt. Finally, they fell silent.

Hoss eyed them uneasily.
This isn’t the time to challenge the Shadow
, he wanted to warn them. He could sense the vast power beneath the emptiness. It was the power to nullify anything thrown against it, to take in the assault and make it disappear. Strength didn’t matter, speed didn’t matter, willpower didn’t matter. The Shadow would swallow anything that opposed it.

Hanson stood up and glared at the other councilors, who stood up a little less eagerly. She led the way to the back of the plane. Peterson remained seated, seemingly unaware of or uncaring about the coming confrontation.

Hanson looked at Hoss challengingly as she passed.
Get up, you coward
, she seemed to be saying with her eyes. They’d never gotten along, but her look suggested she thought they had a mutual enemy. Hoss turned his head away.

Outside the windows, it was dark, but it was a warm, natural darkness, the darkness of the Earth, filled with the currents of life. It was as if it glowed from underneath. Behind him, the Shadow gave off no such warmth.

Fitzsimmons stood as they approached. His face was blank and his eyes had turned completely black.

“We insist on a vote of the Council,” Hanson said, her voice rising shrilly with every syllable. Faced with the vacuum that was the Master, she seemed less sure of herself. She backed away a little, stopping between Bacher and Kovalev as if they would protect her, but they backed away as well, leaving her stranded.

Fitzsimmons turned his head ever so slightly, as if listening to instructions only he could hear. “Vote?”

“We have a quorum.” Bacher spoke up, his voice loud, as if the louder he got, the braver he got. “There are eight councilors on this plane.”

“What do you wish to vote on?” Fitzsimmons’s voice was toneless, neutral, yet threatening.

“The leadership of the Council,” Hanson said. “Us being forced to go along on this trip. Everything!”

“I see,” Fitzsimmons said. “Everything.” He tilted his head. “
Everything
it shall be. Everything you are, everything you ever were, everything you ever will be.”

The darkness behind Fitzsimmons enveloped him and he grew dim, as if black smoke was obscuring him. He didn’t move, but the cloud of blackness rose up and over the four dissenting councilors, roiling about the ceiling of the cabin. They looked upward nervously and backed away.

But it was too late. The Shadow dropped over them, and they were covered in a shroud of nothingness. They disappeared into the darkness. From out of the void, out of the emptiness, as if from a vast distance and across a vast span of time, everyone on the plane could hear horrific screams. Then the anguished shrieks were pulled apart, dissipated, scattered. There was a final small cry, and then there was silence.

The councilors popped back into view, one by one, emerging from the blackness. First was Belinda Hanson. She looked shrunken, lifeless. She walked back to the front of the plane without a sound. Then Jerome Bacher appeared, stiff and jerky as he followed her. When Bogdan Kovalev reappeared, he showed no sign of anything wrong. His face was blank, his movements steady, but he seemed somehow devoid of life. Last to reemerge was Isaac Hargraves, who didn’t look like a ten-year-old boy anymore, but an ancient, wizened old man the size of a child. They were all staring into the distance and seemed oblivious to their surroundings.

Hoss scrunched down in his seat as if that would make him invisible. Jodie’s hand dug into his arm, and next to her, Jimmy and Pete’s faces were pale with shock. He had caught the look in the eyes of the former councilors as they walked by: empty, hopeless, the aspect of the eternally damned. He saw Jared staring at him from across the aisle, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Hoss shook his head emphatically as if to say,
Don’t do anything. Don’t do anything at all.
Jared nodded, then followed Hoss’s example, trying to squeeze his lanky frame back down into his seat.

No one said anything for the rest of the long flight. No one moved when they refueled in New York and continued to California. In the awful silence, time seemed to disappear, and it was as if they had spent all eternity inside this small space, with the maw of complete oblivion only a few feet away.

Hoss closed his eyes. In his mind bloomed the red wave of the Wildering horde in the simulations, an inexorable tide that washed over the entire country, and then the world, seemingly in the blink of an eye. That was what this was all about, he was certain of it. The Shadow Vampires were here to create that epidemic, to make sure that nothing stopped it from happening. The Shadow had arrived to keep the Golden Vampires occupied while the world of men was overwhelmed by the Wildering infection.

Hoss was vampire. He had little sympathy for mankind, but he didn’t want them wiped out.

He blinked awake, surprised that he had nodded off. But he was exhausted. What harm could it do to sleep for a short time? He closed his eyes again.

#

Hoss was back in the Twilight wasteland, confronting the Shadow. The void swallowed his thrown spear and laughter surrounded him.

“You cannot defeat darkness with darkness,” said a voice from everywhere and nowhere. “You simply add to the darkness; you become one of us.”

Underneath his fear and confusion, Hoss was still defiant. He had spent his entire existence alone, triumphant over others of his kind. He had conquered all the vampires of Twilight. His will had overcome all resistance. “I have no wish to join you,” he said. “Kill me, if you wish, but I will not become one of you.”

“You have always been one of us, but it amuses us let a few individuals maintain the illusion of free will. The Light was defeated long ago. There is only the void, the Shadow that covers everything. You wander in a Twilight that we allow to exist so that we might know the totality of our victory.”

Hoss sensed that falseness of that claim. The Shadow would not tolerate independence. It did not voluntarily allow the suggestion of free will. Something was keeping it from the victory of total darkness.

“I exist, and all the lands beyond the walls exist, because you cannot snuff out that last resistance,” he said. “If you take me into the Shadow, I will still hold a spark of myself, and from the inside, I will destroy you. That is why you allow the Twilight; because no matter how hard you try to shroud us, you cannot completely obliterate life.”

There was a grudging silence. The voice sounded no less certain when it finally spoke. “Perhaps. But in the end, there will be the void and nothing but the void, and even our consciousness will fade, and all will be nothingness.”

“Until that time, I defy you!” Hoss shouted.

#

He woke up as the wheels of the plane hit the runway in Crescent City. Inside the plane, nothing had changed. Everyone was still quiet and frozen in fear. But inside Hoss, something had come alive.
This is not the end,
he thought.
We must resist.

He glanced over at Jared, who must have seen something in his expression, for a look of hope came over his face. Hoss turned to Jodie, Jimmy and Pete. “Do what I do,” he said quietly.