A Vampire's Christmas Carol (10 page)

He continued to stagger toward her. She
raised the pencil in her right hand, holding it point-out so that
if he attempted to charge directly at her, he’d be impaled on it.
Her left hand lifted the cross up and out.

“Michael, don’t.” She put everything she had
into the plea.

He ignored it and continued. At least he
didn’t use that super-human speed. Probably couldn’t anymore,
though she dared not depend on that. His breathing was loud and
heavy. Each harsh exhalation carried a groan with it.

When he was only a couple of steps away, she
steeled herself and got the pencil ready, praying it would work.
Instead of moving forward any more, though, he surprised her when
he stopped, grabbed the wrist that held the pencil, and drew it
toward his face. The fangs showed stark white as his mouth opened
wide. She tried to shift the pencil in her grip to get it close to
him, but almost lost her hold on it entirely.

“Michael, no!” She screamed as she struggled
to yank her wrist loose from his hold.

Chapter
8

A hard tug pulled her arm out of his control.
Carol brought up the pencil ready to stab him, but changed her mind
at almost the last second. Following an instinct she couldn’t
fathom, she lifted the cross in her left hand and held it out as
far from her throat as it would go. She leaned forward to put it
inches from his face.

He drew a breath and began to reach for her
arm again, then stopped. For several long moments, he stayed in
that position, breath heaving in and out harshly, arm extended,
reaching to grab hers. Very slowly, he lifted his head to look up
from her arm to her face, stopping to focus on the cross for
several long moments.

“Carol?” The word was soft, almost
hesitant.

He sounded rational, in control. She raked a
quick glance across his eyes. Flashes of red flickered off and on
there, but it was no longer the steady fierce glow of a few minutes
ago. His gaze traveled upward from the cross to her face. The
tension of the attack drained from him. Shoulders slumped and arms
relaxed down to his sides. “I’m sorry.” He said it so softly she
could barely hear.

Then he straightened again. “I can’t control
it any longer.” He glanced around, looking at the dead vampire on
the floor and then the back door. “It’s time. I’ll be right back.”
He walked past her, heading toward the living room.

Carol didn’t follow. Instead she went to the
back door and looked out through the window. The snow had stopped.
That might even be moonlight reflecting off the pristine white
fluff that blanketed the ground. Was there a hint of slightly less
dark sky near the horizon on the left? Yes, surely. Pretty soon
Michael would find an end to his suffering. An end to the horribly
transfigured life he’d never wanted.

Why did a funny little internal pang stab
into her gut at the thought? Where did that twist in the region of
her heart come from? All he wanted was to die human, to find peace
at last. He’d shown no bitterness about the years of normal human
lifespan stolen from him. He’d accepted he couldn’t have those
back.

No sound alerted her to his return. He still
moved with that eerie quietness that must be a vampire thing.
Instead a flash of movement in her peripheral vision made her whirl
in alarm.

He carried a canvas tote bag that bulged in
odd ways and places. The way he held it out from his body, as
though he couldn’t bear to have it too near, made her wonder about
the contents.

Then he offered it to her. “Take this,” he
asked.

She debated which hand to use. The pencil was
in her right and she didn’t want to risk moving it to the weaker
hand, but the left arm also bore the bloody slice and she didn’t
want that getting too close to him. In the end, she took that bag
with her right hand and kept the pencil there as well.

The bag weighed considerably more than she
expected and clanked oddly. She looked down into it. “Chains? For
him?”

Michael shook his head. “For me. I’m at the
end. Can’t trust myself anymore. That was too close. I almost… I
nearly…did it. Next time I may not stop. I can’t risk it again.” He
drew in a deep breath and looked at the sprawled figure on the
floor. “I hate to ask, but… I can’t do it myself.”

“Do what?”

“All of it. Won’t be pleasant, but…” He
started to shake and the red flickered in his eyes. “Outside.
Please. Quickly.”

He sped past her and opened the door. A blast
of cold air hit her, but there was no breeze and the sky had
cleared. A sliver of moon shone down. Reluctantly, Carol followed
him down three steps and out into the back yard. Her tennis shoes
sank into the four inches of snow and crunched on the layer of ice
beneath it. He crossed a stretch of pure white ground, stopping
where four upright metal poles had been driven deep to form an
eight-foot by three-foot rectangle.

His breathing was quick and harsh again.
“Quickly. The chains.” He lay down in the snow in the midst of the
poles.

Carol opened the tote. In pulling them out,
she discovered that what she had thought one long chain was
actually four, all with clips on one end that slid open and closed
and a heavy leather cuff on the other. She held one up, staring at
it, not sure she really believed what she thought he wanted.

“Hurry,” he urged. “Can’t hold on much
longer.” The red flickered in his eyes faster. “On me.”

“You want me to chain you to those
posts.”

He nodded, closing his eyes as though even
the moonlight shining on the snow hurt.

“I—“

He knew what he was doing.

She drew a deep breath and fastened the chain
through an eyelet hole in the post and then circled his wrist with
the cuff, pulling it tight to ensure his hand wouldn’t slide
through, and buckled it closed. His wrists were almost pathetically
thin, with only the barest layer of flesh covering bone and
whatever wasted muscle remained. It was the first time she’d
actually touched him, and it affected her oddly. Though his skin
was cool, almost cold, it sent a jolt of tingly heat up her
arm.

No.

The man would be dead in less than an
hour.

The realization sent tears coursing down her
cheek as she fastened the second cuff to his wrist.

He opened his eyes. Red flashed
intermittently as he watched her. “No tears. This is what I want.
Do my ankles too. I’m going to lose—“

Before he could even finish the sentence, he
did in fact lose control. His mouth opened wide and a ghastly,
eerie howl emerged. The sound combined physical agony and
frustrated anger. The blood red in his eyes turned almost black in
the dim light.

He began to thrash and writhe, trying to get
loose and get to her. The chains rattled and clanked as he strained
against them, wrestling to get free with all his remaining
strength. When she grabbed his right angle, he kicked out at her.
It took several minutes of struggle to get his ankles fastened to
the poles as well, leaving him spread-eagled in the snow.

It hurt watching him thrash helplessly, madly
in the chains. He didn’t deserve this. The man had fought so
heroically, resisting the urge to drink from her, and his reward
was a miserable, painful death. Once she had him secure, she stood
for a few minutes, praying for him as he continued to writhe and
roar and raise his head, trying futilely to get close enough to
bite.

The thought of biting reminded her that
Antoine still lay on the kitchen floor with a stake in him. They’d
been in the processing of dragging him outside when Michael lost
control. Best she finish that business now.

It wasn’t easy dragging a dead vampire out
the door, down the steps and into the yard. Antoine was lean, but
tall, with more bulk than you’d guess by looking at him. She took
care he remained face down to avoid accidentally dislodging the
stake. By the time she got him ten feet away from the house, she
was sweating, despite the cold.

She stood over the vampire, struggling to
catch her breath and wondering what to do next. “Drain him” Michael
had said. What the heck did that mean? Unfortunately, Michael was
in no condition to ask about it.

He didn’t have the strength to keep up the
struggle long, though, so she sat on the bottom step, waiting,
hoping he had one more period of lucidity left in him. Ten minutes
later, her patience was rewarded. Michael stopped straining against
the bonds and quieted.

She walked over to him. “What do I have to do
to Antoine? You said something about ‘draining him’?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry. Have to ask you…to do
this. Get a knife and open a vein. Also, chip through the ice so
the blood can hit the ground. Then leave him out here and the sun
will finish him. Not an easy thing for you. Sorry.”

“I’ll handle it.”

She said it to make him feel better. In fact,
she felt anything but confident or eager for the task he outlined.
She had no desire even to touch the vampire’s body now that she’d
dragged it outside. But she wouldn’t tolerate any remote
possibility Antoine could revive as long as she could do something
to prevent it.

Carol went back inside and found the knife
Antoine had dropped earlier, handling it with care, carrying it so
the blade pointed down at the ground. In the mudroom off the hall
by the back door, she found a pair of rubber boots. They were
several sizes too big, but still better than wading around out
there in her soaked tennis shoes. She also found a bin full of
garden equipment. Rooting around in it produced a trowel with a
pointed end. She took that out back along with the knife.

Michael was thrashing around and howling in
anguish again. Doing her best to ignore him, she chose a spot near
Antoine’s neck and began to brush away snow, then she chipped
through the ice until the trowel poked into actual dirt. Until
yesterday, the weather hadn’t been all that cold, so the ground
wasn’t frozen. After scraping away a bit more snow, ice and some
old dead grass, she had a cleared patch a few inches in diameter.
Despite the cold temperature, she had sweat running down the side
of her face by the time she finished.

That was the easy part, though.

She really didn’t look forward to the next
bit. But dawn was approaching and she dared not delay long. She
shifted Antoine’s body a few inches so that his neck was right over
the hole she’d dug.

She dreaded the next move. Never in her life
had she done anything remotely like this. Lifting the knife, she
marked her target, but paused for a moment, confounded by
squeamishness over what she was about to do. She reminded herself
of how Antoine had destroyed Michael’s life and what he’d tried to
do to her. It strengthened her to plunge the knife down into his
neck.

Unfortunately it apparently missed the major
blood vessels. Her stab produced only a small trickle of blood that
took several minutes even to drip down off his skin and onto the
ground. He was dead. His heart wasn’t pumping, so there wouldn’t be
much blood flowing, but still, if she hit a major vein or artery,
there should be more than that. Especially since, by a stroke of
unconsidered luck, she managed to leave him lying on a slight
down-slope so that his head was lower than his feet.

Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she pulled the
knife out and brought it down again. This time she slashed
laterally into his neck rather than stabbing, getting the knife as
far under him as she could manage, given that he lay face down.

A quick gush of blood poured out, running
fast down his neck to drip into the hole. Fighting nausea, anger
and depression, she watched it for a moment, then stood and turned
her back on the body.

She went over to Michael, who’d stopped
howling and thrashing and lay quietly now. “It’s done,” she told
him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. A
small, weak smile curved his lips. “Thank God.” He took several
pain-wracked breaths before he said, “You should go now. Done all
you can. It’s starting to…light. Traffic on the road soon. Someone
will see you and help.”

She just stared at him, unable to say
anything. “Goodbye” seemed so ridiculously weak and inadequate for
the situation. What could she say? Tears mingled with the sweat
pouring down her face. She shook her head and a few drops sprayed
on him.

“It’s all right,” he said, seeing her
distress. “At last I’ll have…peace.” He shut his eyes for a moment,
conserving his strength.

“It’s not fair. It just totally sucks! You
don’t deserve this.”

He sighed and looked up at her.
“Can’t…disagree. But this is better than…the other. Better than
being a monster.” Melted snow soaked his hair and clothes, but he
didn’t appear to feel the chill.

“I wish… You did say there might be a
way—“

He shook his head. “No. Too dangerous. You’ve
already risked…too much just staying here. Wouldn’t want that on
my…conscience.”

“Michael, I—“

“No. Make me happy, if you go. Have a good
life. Find that hero. He’s out there somewhere for you.”

“I don’t… I can’t…”

“You can. Don’t want you to stay and watch.
Please. Can’t bear that.”

She drew a hard breath and tears rushed down
her face even faster. “All right. God rest your soul and give you
peace.” She knelt down beside one of the corner posts, where he
couldn’t reach her, but she could take his hand. Measuring the
distance to be sure he couldn’t touch her with his mouth, she
raised his hand as far as the chain would allow, then she lowered
her face and kissed his fingers. Tears ran onto them.

After a moment, she backed away. She’d feared
the touch would spark another round of frenzied struggle, but it
didn’t. Possibly he was now too exhausted and drained to be capable
of it.

He watched her with that small, sad smile.
“In another life…” He stopped and shook his head. “Go.”