Endlessly (4 page)

Jason hurried to the driver’s side of
the car. I always let him drive to the hotel afterwards, while I
basked in the accomplishment of survival.

Jason gave it gas, and we headed for
the hotel. Jason checked his mirrors a hundred times, making sure
we weren’t followed. I felt sympathy for Jason. He only ate humans
so that he could shift into werewolf form. It’s a good thing he
didn’t need it to survive.

At the hotel, I checked us in, then we
drove around to the back. We looked for humans. None were around,
so we did our work. Jason retrieved the bagged body from the back
seat. He flung the strap over his shoulder almost effortlessly. We
followed our standard procedure, taking the steps, avoiding the
elevators, and checking the long hallways. TVs blared behind almost
every door. We approached our room, and I used our key card to open
the door.

He took the bag to the bathroom. It
looked like any hotel room: two full size beds, ugly floral
patterned comforters, a television and a bathroom.

I grabbed the TV remote and turned it
on, then flopped down on the queen bed closest to the window. I
flipped through the channels, turning the volume up to drown out
the noises coming from the bathroom.

I knew what was happening behind the
door. I had watched Jason and other werewolves before. He would
dump the girl’s body in the tub and strip her naked. He would then
take off his own clothes so they wouldn’t tear when he shifted. He
would shape shift into his werewolf form, lean over the tub and
devour the girl’s entire body, bones, skin, hair,
everything.

Once he was done he would take a shower
and rinse any evidence down the drain. Nothing but the girl’s
clothes would remain. We would throw these in the dumpster behind
the hotel before we left. That trash would go to a dump and no one
would ever know. And since she was a prostitute, more than likely,
no one would ever care.

As my meal settled my eyelids grew
heavy. I thought I would close my eyes for just a second, but ended
up falling asleep. I dreamt. Dreaming was something that I did not
do often. Now I saw the girl with the strange aura, her skin as
pale as mine. Her hair was snow white. This wasn’t a light yellow
like my own hair; this was true white. She stood in a grassy field.
Above her the sun and clouds sailed through the sky. Hunching her
shoulders, she bent forward.

As I walked closer I saw something
protrude from her back. She raised her hands to her forehead and
stared at me, her black eyes in agony. She took a deep breath, then
unleashed an animal-like scream.

I woke with a start. My whole body
jerked, shaking the bed. I let out a yelp. I gasped for breath, and
wondered where I was. As I heard Jason belch I knew that he’d
probably awakened me. He’d flung open the bathroom door, and now he
was creating sound effects with his digestion. He stood in the
doorway rubbing his enlarged stomach with one hand, as he held the
empty duffle in the other.

When he looked at me he must’ve seen
the confusion in my eyes. ”Jesus Christ! Are you ok?” He fished in
his pocket for his cigarettes.

“Holy Shit!” I muttered. “I just had a
fucked up dream.”

“That’s no good,” said Jason. “It’s got
to be bad when a vampire has a nightmare. Verloren, you’re what
nightmares are made of.” He chuckled to himself as he threw the
duffle bag on the floor. He shook his head and ran one hand through
his wet hair. He held the cigarette pack in the other.

“That girl from earlier today,” I
said.

He leaped onto his bed, stretched out
on his stomach, and turned his head to me. “I’ve been thinking
about that too. If she comes back in Wednesday I’m going to try and
get her number.” He lit a cigarette. “If you can’t fuck her I want
to.”

“No you’re not!” I snapped.

“I knew it. You do want to fuck her.”
He jumped up and sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s about time you
got some. I can tell when you feed off of a chick you want to bust
her shit up. You haven’t gotten laid since I’ve known you, and you
are one grumpy son of a bitch. You need to bust a nut, dude.” He
took a deep drag off his smoke, then he flopped on his
bed.

I inhaled, closed my eyes, and tried to
ignore him. “Go to sleep. I’ll wake you a few hours and we’ll head
home.” I stared in the direction of the television but didn’t watch
it. He finished his cigarette and then snuffed it out. I heard the
sounds of his snoring.

In truth, I did find the girl
attractive. It was the way she carried herself. She reminded me of
a flower, closed and waiting for the sun. With sun she could open
her pedals and bathe in the light.

She was almost certainly an incarnate.
The incarnates often sensed the strangeness in their lives, but
they struggled with what that meant. They came in the store
searching for books with answers. What they wanted to know most
was: were they a part of something bigger?

Like so many incarnates, the girl was
embarrassed and confused, but her confusion went deeper. There was
something about her, and I didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t a
typical incarnate, so what was she? Something I’d never seen
before. I went through a mental checklist of every type of creature
I knew, but came up empty. Could she be from another world? I
doubted it. Every extraterrestrial I’d ever known had a blue hue,
but not her.

I snapped out of it, woke Jason and we
headed for home. He dozed as I drove home. I barely noticed the
road or the traffic. All my thoughts were of the girl.

Chapter 4

REMEMBERING PURGATORY

The next day I was anxious to see
Jessica. I sat on the stool behind the store counter, as my DVD
player ran through “Dawn of the Dead.” The flashing images still
haunted me. I couldn’t get the girl with the strange aura out of my
head. I had to know what was happening.

I paid little attention to Jason as he
busied himself with inventory, only asking him to put on Marilyn
Manson. I wanted to stop thinking about the girl, yet I wanted her
to come back. I realized that she was growing into an
obsession.

The door opened and Chris came in
carrying a plastic sack. He put it on the counter.

I opened the bag and checked the
contents. “Hollow points right?” I asked.

“It’s all you ever ask for. So what are
you doing this weekend?” Chris crossed his arms and leaned on the
counter.

“Nothing that I can think of. Why? You
want to do some target practice?”

“Always man,” Chris said. “You know it
would be better to practice with regular bullets
though.”

“Yeah, but I like the way the .45
hollow point bullets blow shit up.”

He laughed. “Yeah I know what you
mean.” He quieted down, then said softly: “I had this guy come in
yesterday. Said you sent him. He was looking to buy a gun but he
didn’t have ID. He’s cool right? I told him to come back today. I
figured that I would talk to you first.”

“Yeah he’s cool,” I blurted, before
realizing that I didn’t know who he was talking about.

Then the door opened and a short figure
moved quickly down the aisle. Jessica put her coat and bag away
under the counter.

Chris stood up, as always unsure of
what to make of her overly happy persona. “Jessica.” He
acknowledged her, then looked back to me. “Well, I gotta go open up
the shop. I’ll call you about the target practice.”

“You know I hate talking on the phone.
Just come over,” I said. He knew I hated phone
conversations.

He stopped at the door. “I’ll call
you,” he said with a smug smile.

“Don’t call me, you asshole! Just come
over!”

He laughed as the door closed behind
him. He headed across the parking lot toward his shop.

“He doesn’t like me much does he?”
Jessica asked.

“Chris is about as thrilled with your
eternally happy joy attitude as I am,” I said coldly.

She slipped her hands in her back
pockets and shrugged at me. The cool thing about Jessica is she
didn’t care what anyone thought. She killed everyone with kindness.
It was hard to truly dislike her.

“So?” she said. “What about yesterday?
I felt this pulse go through me right before you looked at
me.”

“Yesterday…last night.” I struggled for
the right words. I didn’t want to talk about feeding with Jessica.
That was private. I steered my thoughts back to the girl. “That
girl had the weirdest aura I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get her out
of my mind. Then, last night, images started flashing through my
mind. It was…like dreaming with my eyes open.”

“What kind of images?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. When I
try I lose all memory. Chris thinks I’m having
seizures.”

“Can you remember anything about
them?”

“One was of the Quatre, Sara in
particular. Then when that girl looked at me…when our eyes met…” My
head shook.

Her eyes widened a little. “Hmm. The
pulse.”

“What does all that mean?”

She bit her lower lip and looked at me.
I felt like she was holding something back. “Strange stories are
going around the born knowing community, stories about the Quatre
and…Sara.” She shivered.

“What stories?”

“Nothing really clear. Just rumors.
Apparently they’ve been….experimenting.” She squinted, as if she
were trying to focus on a distant picture.

“Experimenting?” I asked.

“I’m not real sure, but it’s all
centered around Sara and….possibly hybrids.”

Sara. Her name brought back the fear.
What was she doing now? She would be in her late teens, and if
she’d developed the way she wanted to she would now be greed’s
creature. All she would do is want. How would the rest of them do
when this full grown child with her incredible powers, started
throwing a tantrum. And hybrids? The Quatre didn’t allow vampires
to change incarnates into vampires because of the fear of what a
hybrid would become. Yet now the Quatre was running its own
experiments.

The thought hit me like lightning. “You
don’t think that they would be building some kind of army do you?
They have Sara, a fairy. You know how greedy fairies can be. She
might want to build some crazy empire for herself.”

“No,” Jessica said. “That would be hard
to miss. Someone would catch on. But they’re doing something. It’s
got everyone stressed. The board is supposed to put fear in us. It
was created to keep things quiet and under control. It selects it
members carefully. Hania is there because he is one of the oldest
of the born knowings. Kale was chosen because he is a meticulous
record keeper. He’s documented every day of his life, even when he
was human. I don’t know how the werewolf and incarnate were
selected, but there was a reason for each of them.

“Overall we want everyone represented
so the board can reflect popular opinion. The born knowings
structured it like that once the dragons went extinct. We had to
control our activities among humans. That was especially true among
vampires, with the danger being greatest if a vampire were to
infect an incarnate. What if the incarnates shifted in front of
humans? What if the vampires went mad and turned every human into a
vampire? The world would be chaos. If the balance of the vampire
population tipped too far it could drive humans into extinction.
Then how would you survive?”

She reflected on her words then
continued. “We can’t allow humans to see our lives. They would kill
us all. They mustn’t even know we’re here. Still, if anything were
to get out of hand with the Quatre I know Hania would handle
it.”

Reluctantly I extended my hand to her.
I had never allowed any born knowing to look into my mind before.
Some things about my life I was afraid to know. Ignorance is bliss.
But now it was time.

“Here,” I said. “It’s the only way you
will be able to see what I saw.”

She looked at my hand, shocked.
“What?”

“I want you to see the pictures I saw.
But only look for them. Don’t go rummaging around in there. I don’t
know how long I’ve been alive. I’ve done vile things to humans. Go
in and see for yourself.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
There are reasons we vampires can’t remember things.

I felt her tiny hands close on mine.
She laid her palm on my palm, with the subsequent mental intrusion.
I had to fight the reflex to keep her out. I tried to pry into her
mind, but it was like getting a door slammed in my face. After a
few awkward moments she pulled her hand away.

I opened my eyes. Looking at her, I
knew she had seen more than she’d expected.

“Some things are left better unknown,”
she whispered, “and some are better left until the right time. Just
as there are things you don’t want me to know, there are things
that I do not want you to know.”

Why was she hiding it from me? My
thoughts felt slow and confusing. Was she using a spell on me? She
must be hiding something big.

Then the odor hit me, like hot rotting
garbage and feces. I threw my arm up and pushed my nose into the
bend of my elbow. I recognized the ugly smell immediately: a
troll.