Immortal Coil: A Novel (Immortal Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Then Ralph yanked the serrated blade from the pimp’s chest with a grunt. An atrial spurt splattered his evil face. Michael’s heart must have stopped then, because he dropped to the ground like a stone. His killer reached down and grabbed me by the hair, dragging me back to the motel room.

  “‘I’m going to kill you, boy, but not before I have my fun with you first.’ I don’t know if he meant torture, or something even more sinister.

  “The door to the motel stood ajar, but he picked me up by the back of the shirt and the seat of my pants, and threw me through the closed window to the left of the door. Glass and wood splinters blew inward as my head crashed through the window’s grid. I could feel small slivers of glass piercing the palms of my hands as I tried to protect his face. I landed on the floor in a bloody heap. The maniac passed through the doorway and picked me up off the floor. He heaved me onto the bed. My head slammed into the wooden post. As the room began to spin and go dark, I saw him advancing on the bed, shedding his pants as he approached.

  “‘What I plan to do to you before I kill you will be…’ What he said beyond that I don’t know, because I passed out.

  “Sometime later, I woke to semi-darkness. I could feel the bed under me where Ralph had thrown me. My head hurt, my palms hurt, but I could see my stepfather lying in the bed next to me. His face was inches from mine, blocking most of my view. Ralph had an odd look in his eyes: were they pleading with me, as if begging for help.

  “I ignored my throbbing head and bleeding palms, and sat up.

  “I dove off the bed then, and stumbled backward against the wall. I would have clawed through the plaster if I could.

  “I saw a man sitting on Ralph’s chest. The man’s head was down so all I could really see was the hump of his back. After my thudding heart slowed, I could hear something else in the room: a moist sucking sound. Then the sucking stopped, and the man straddling Ralph sat up. He turned toward me. The man’s eyes glowed red, as if a film of blood covered them. His lips were smeared with red, and it dripped from his teeth. With a hysterical laugh, I realized it was blood—my stepfather’s blood.

  “‘A vampire,’ I said in a whisper that was more awe than fear.

  “The stranger climbed off the bed and licked his bloody lips. He straightened his clothes. He was wearing a light blue button-up shirt, relax-fit jeans and a pair of Italian loafers (no socks). I was only dimly aware that the man’s blood-soaked eyes had cleared, and piercing light gray eyes appeared. I approached cautiously, studying the eyes that had changed so drastically. It was as if they had been filled with blood, and then were suddenly drained.

  “The stranger studied me for a moment, and then stepped forward. He took my bleeding hands into his own. Abruptly, the stranger placed his mouth over the wounds on my palms, and sucked at the cuts, spitting out shards of glass. When he was sure I was free of all the glass slivers, he pulled me to the bathroom, located a first aid kit and wrapped the cuts.

  “The man spoke. ‘Is there somewhere for you to go?’

  “At first I found it hard to speak, but after catching my breath I managed to croak out a reply. ‘Take me with you.’

  “The man smiled then but—no—was all he said.

  “‘I have nowhere to go. Take me with you. I will die if you don’t.’

  “He said, ‘You will die if I do.’

  “At first I didn’t understand. Then he turned toward Ralph.

  “‘You won’t kill me. Else, you’d have done it already.’

  “‘Your stepfather was my third infusion,’ he said. ‘I do not need any more blood tonight. If that were not the case, I could very well have fed on you next.’

  “‘I don’t believe that,’ I said defiantly.

  “The man smiled the most charming smile. ‘Believe what you wish.’

  “‘I believe you will take me with you.’ Now I smiled back. And I’m adorable when I smile, or so I’ve been told.

  “The man smiled again, but this time it was a tired smile. ‘Your mother would want you back. You should go back to her.’

  “‘She brought that into my life.’ I pointed through the open bathroom door at my stepfather. I saw something that shocked me. I stood, headed into the bedroom again. Ralph was sitting up, looking at me. ‘He’s not dead,’ I said.

  “The neck had been torn open, and didn’t look like any vampire bite I’d ever seen in the movies. There was a trickle of blood oozing from the ripped skin, but it didn’t look life threatening.

  “‘I did not completely drain him, and he has a strong will to live,’ the vampire said. ‘But he does not have enough blood to sustain his life. I must decapitate him in order to keep him from coming back. It’s the only way.’

  “I climbed onto the bed. I looked over at the hunting knife lying in the folds of the sheet. Ralph stared at me with glossy eyes—begging eyes. Please save me, those eyes said. I leaned down close to his ear.

  “I whispered softly into his ear. Thinking of the years of torture and pain, and fear, I endured at his hands I said, ‘Like you said. It’s a dangerous world out there, you should have been careful.’ I picked up the hunting knife. His eyes filled with tears. I dropped the knife away from his neck. When he saw me backing down, a steely resolve replaced the tears. He whispered to me then. Coward. He glared at me with the hate he had always shown toward me.

  “He wanted me to do it.

  “And so I did; I sliced through his neck, hesitantly at first. But soon the knife hit bone, and I made the final push through the spine. I felt a queasy sense of dread afterward, but I had done it. I had shown the vampire I could do it, too.

  “I was shocked that so little blood oozed from the neck stump. The dude really is a vampire, I thought. There is hardly any blood left in the body; he drank almost every drop. I tucked the knife into my belt. I stepped off the bed and turned to face the vampire.

  “He didn’t bother looking at Ralph’s body. ‘You cannot come with me,’ he said.

  “My shoulders slumped, defeated. My stomach must have growled then; because the vampire gave me an inquisitive look.

  “‘You are hungry,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you something to eat. We will talk.’

  “He took me to the corner restaurant and bought me a burger and fries. We sat in a corner booth and talked in hushed tones. “My name is Antony,” he said, and explained the details of his existence. He required at least 18 quarts of blood every night upon waking at sundown. If this quantity was not reached, he entered a state of confusion and could attack anything—or anyone—in the vicinity. At that point, choice was off the table for any vampire.

  “‘You’re really a vampire.’ I couldn’t stop looking at his protruding fangs. ‘How can no one see what you are?’ I looked around. No one even seemed to know we existed. No one cared who we were, or what we were doing there.

  “‘Yes, I am a vampire. I will never get sick, I will never grow old and I will never die; assuming I keep my head, that is.”

  I chuckled at this, but I could tell he hadn’t meant what he said as a joke. My laughter turned into a nervous cough. ‘Can the sun kill you?’ I asked. ‘Like in the movies?’”

  “He said it could. I asked him how many vampires were in the world.

  “‘Very few,’ he said. ‘We are territorial, and if another vampire invades your territory, the turf war is usually bloody and costly—to both vampire and prey.’

  “I asked: ‘Do vampires ever work together?’

  “‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We team up all the time. We take mates, as well; although not for the same reasons humans do. Vampires take a mate for the comfort of having someone lying next to them during the death sleep.’

  “What’s death sleep?’ I asked.

  “‘It is what vampires refer to when they sleep during the daylight hours.’

  “‘Oh.’ I was too fascinated to say much more.

  “He continued. ‘We also join alliances, and can work together for a common cause. A colony of ten
or twelve vampires can take out an entire army.”

  “‘Are you…?’ I tried to think of a delicate way to ask this next question.

  “‘Go on.’ Antony urged me on with that handsome smile again.

  “‘Are you evil?’ I said it.

  “Antony smiled; it was exactly the question he was expecting, I could tell. He explained that evil was in the act, not the individual. He believed religious fanatics came up with the notion of good and evil in order to explain their own actions.

  “Let me hunt for you,” I said it with such conviction, I practically growled it.

  “Antony cocked an eyebrow.

  “I went on while I had his attention. ‘I can be your daytime lookout; I can scour the streets for just the right victims, read newspapers, and search the internet. By the time you wake at dusk we can have your night planned out. It can’t be easy looking for prey all the time. You need me.’

  “Antony seemed to think about this. Then he said no.

  “Yes, please let me do this. I know it could work. I want—I need to be in your life. Please, I’m begging you. Take me in…or…’

  “‘What I said next almost ruined my chances to go with Antony.

  “‘Make me like you. Make me a vampire. We can hunt together, as equals.’

  Antony flinched. Or perhaps he had jumped to his feet but sat back down again so fast that it only seemed like he flinched.

  “I have since learned about his trouble with a human named Bane who was then sired, turned evil and then killed by Antony. It left him scared and tormented. He’d never consider turning me.

  “But he did take me in. Turns out, he was lonely and looking for company. He wanted me to join him. It was why he let me see him in the first place.

  “Ralph found me when the diamond ring showed up in a police raid on a pawn shop in the neighborhood where I was working for Michael. It didn’t take him long to track me down after that. Years after Ralph’s death my mother remarried, I had learned. I found that out in the same article I learned my mother had declared me dead in absentia. She had taken out a life insurance policy on me when I was young, and the only way she could collect is if I was legally dead. I just hope she’s doing something productive with the money.

  “I think about her sometimes, but I don’t miss her. She hadn’t been a very good mother and I can’t seem to bring myself to really care what she’s doing with her life. Someday I might forgive her for what she has done to me, but right now I’m better off without her and she’s better off without me. I’ll leave it at that.”

  Maggie stared at David for a long time. There were tears in her eyes threatening to spill down her cheeks. She wanted to reach out and hug him or do something to comfort him.

  “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said when the lump in her throat had passed.

  7.

  Sarah Winston drove home from work around 5:15 p.m., stopping once to gas up her Jeep Cherokee. She pulled into her driveway and casually locked her S.U.V. using the automatic key fob. She used her house key to unlock the front door and stepped inside. She looked around the living room, admiring and cherishing its cleanliness and beauty before the rush. Soon her husband or her kids would burst through the door, destroying everything in their path. She rushed to the kitchen and started pulling ingredients out of the fridge to make dinner. As she kneaded the eggs, panko breadcrumbs and raw hamburger into meatloaf, she thought of how she might approach the subject to her husband that her boss planned on giving her a promotion. Should have been good news, except the promotion was for a position in Texas and they would have to move. She was sure her husband would be okay with this news, but the kids would be furious. She was elbow deep in the bloody ground beef when she heard the door swing abruptly open then closed again. She heard the book-laden knapsack hit the floor, and then the Converse high-tops being kicked off and crashing into the wall. Moments later her bouncing baby boy scampered into the kitchen.

  Randal Winston scuffed along the floor in stocking feet to the fridge and opened the door. He stared into the cool interior of the appliance for several seconds before deciding to ask, “What do we have to snack on?”

  “Apples, carrots, kiwi...”

  Randal slammed the refrigerator door shut. “Mom.”

  “Okay, there are hot pockets in the freezer.”

  “Make them for me?”

  Sarah showed him her meat covered hands, but he had already scampered away. She listened as the boy stomped his way up the stairs. Sarah thought: he’s only one child and yet he sounds like a herd of Clydesdales thundering through my clean house. Sarah smiled; of course she would cook Hot Pockets for him.

  Randal was 13 with his mother’s jet black hair and blue eyes. He had a peppering of small brown freckles across his cheeks and his nose. As his mother entered his room with two hot pockets on a paper plate, she wrinkled up her own freckled nose.

  “Smells like a locker room in here. Put those dirty socks in the laundry chute. Don’t fill up on this junk. Dinner will be ready at seven.”

  It was fall, and the sun was due to set at 6:43 pm.

  Cindy, Randal’s sister, came home next. She breezed into the house, ran up the stairs and closed the door to her room down the hall. Randal barely registered her presence as he continued dodging zombies on the Xbox 360, waving the controller in an effort to force it to his will. His father walked into the house not long after his sister and before he had even made it off the seventh level, his mother was calling him down to dinner.

  He pressed “pause” on the game controller and rushed down the stairs. He was the first one at the dinner table. After a bit of coaxing from her mother, and much protesting from Cindy, the 17-year-old girl staggered out of her room, stomped down the stairs and plopped down at the dining table in a boneless heap.

  She huffed.

  “I’m not even hungry,” she said.

  Her father glared at her from the head of the table.

  As Sarah made the first cut into the steaming meatloaf, the front door burst open with a crash. Sarah screamed, and her husband popped up from his chair. He turned toward the intrusion. Sarah dropped the knife she was holding and pulled Randal closer to her in a protective stance. Everyone stared dumbly at the stranger standing in their doorway.

  The man standing there was six and a half feet tall, wearing a ratty old gray trench coat, black trousers and black cowboy boots. In his huge fist he held a cane—no, not a cane—a staff: a wooden rod almost as tall as the man with a knob of ivory at the top as big as a baseball. The intruder entered the house and closed the door behind him.

  “What the hell!” Thomas Winston rushed to confront the intruder and force him out of his house. Thomas reached for the collar of the trench coat, intending to throw this man out, but before he could make contact with the man, there was a flutter of heavy fabric; and with a speed much too fast for the human eye to see, Thomas was knocked to the floor with the ivory head of the staff in the intruder’s hand. He fell to the floor unconscious and bleeding.

  The family at the table screamed in unison.

  The intruder was too fast for the family to outrun. The woman was pushed down into her chair, and with a hemp rope pulled from the intruder’s coat, her hands were tied to the arms of the chair. Next was the girl. She was tied to the chair at her mother’s left.

  The hemp rope was tied around the boy’s neck and then attached to the intruder’s belt. Choking and crying, Randal was dragged through the room to where Thomas had fallen. The intruder glanced at the two females and smiled. They gasped when they saw his eyes turn a filmy red. The boy, having been driven face first to the floor, could not see what was going on. Near him, however, a framed family picture had fallen from its stand and the glass had smashed out. The boy reached out and pulled the picture from the frame and crammed it into his pocket.

  “Ah, you are all going to taste so good.” The intruder moaned as he looked into each pair of terrified eyes; and then he sank his fan
gs into the man’s neck. The stricken man came back from the realm of unconsciousness just in time to feel the piercing bite to his neck and hear the wild screams of his family. He struggled against his attacker, but his blows were as useless as wind. He was pinned down so tightly that he couldn’t even turn his head. The dying man could feel his heartbeat slowing as he looked at the floor and saw his own life’s blood seeping into the carpet around his head. His last thought was of his family and his inability to protect them.

  The intruder stood, lifting the dying man in his arms, still sucking at the neck wound. Then, with an exhalation of satisfaction, the intruder released his prize and the limp man dropped like a sack of laundry to the floor.

  The intruder turned to the frantic women and smiled. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his mouth. “Good stuff,” he said.

  The boy, still pinned to the intruder, was forced dragged as the attacker sped to the dining room table and the frightened girls. From his kneeling position, he was able to see what had happened to his father through the legs of the table. Pulling his eyes away from the crumpled heap that was his father, the boy then watched as his sister Cindy was targeted.

  The girl’s cries were halted as the intruder dragged a sharpened fingernail across her throat. Holding the girl’s head up by her hair, the intruder leaned over and commenced drinking from the wound as if drinking from a water fountain. He caught as much of the flowing blood as he could, but much of it spilled down his face. As the blood flow slowed, the girl’s eyes lost any sign of life. The intruder released his grip on her hair and the lifeless head dropped to the table. Her head rolled to the side and landed on her arm, making her seem as though she were merely tired, and had laid her head down to rest. The only thing that disrupted that illusion was the puddle of blood seeping onto the table around her head and dripping to the floor.