A Vampire's Christmas Carol (5 page)

He shook his head at her. “It’s very
dangerous, because the timing has to be perfect. If the vampire has
any strength left at all, he’ll drain the human and become a vamp.
And immediately die too, since he’ll be out in the daylight. I’d
prefer not to risk anyone else. I’m reconciled with dying. I’d
prefer it to life as a vampire. The only thing I truly fear is that
I won’t be able to control myself in the final spasm of blood
lust.”

“I see.” Carol scribbled notes on her pad.
“All right, I’m including it in my notes.” She stopped and waited
for him, but he just stared into the fire. Finally she prompted,
“How did you end up here?”

He dragged himself out of the introspection
with an effort. “I mentioned my family lived not far away? After I
ran away from Antoine, I spent some time with Kurt, then I
retreated to here. I wanted to be somewhere away from both the
vampires and their horrible company and the humans who would become
a near unbearable temptation. When this place came on the market, I
bought it. Back in those days, you could still buy a house with
cash and not much paperwork. In fact, it was about the only way you
could buy it. I—”

He stared at her. She saw it rising this
time, the tension starting in his body, the first flash of red in
his eyes.

Remembering his advice, she looked down,
focusing on his mouth rather than his eyes. Without taking her gaze
off him, she set down the pen and shifted the stake into her right
hand, holding it ready should he move toward her. His lips parted
as fangs elongated. Deep grooves showed in his cheek and his jaw
tightened with either pain or effort. Muscles tightened all up and
down his lean frame. Chest tilted forward and knees clenched.

His fingers curled again and dug into the
leather of the chair, holding onto it with all the strength of his
will.

It was worse this time.

His breath heaved in great, gulping gasps,
interrupted by sighing moans that came close to sobs. He tried to
suppress them. She could see the effort he made to hold it back,
but some leaked past his control. Those lengthened into a
continual, low keening growl that went on for several, long
minutes. She knew because she could just hear the ticking of the
clock in the hall over the noise he made.

She almost cried just listening to him
struggle against what must have been considerable pain. How did he
manage to resist and bear it when the answer, the cure, sat no more
than eight feet away? Her left hand crept to her throat, clasping
the silver cross on its chain.

Finally, when she doubted her nerves could
take much more of his anguish, the moaning began to fade. The
tension drained from him and his mouth closed again, the fangs
retracting. She saw the last of the red glow vanish from his eyes
as she met his gaze again. He collapsed back in the chair, his body
almost sinking into itself. He closed his eyes.

He looked terrible, his face growing leaner
and looking older by the moment. Suffering etched harsh lines into
his cheeks and at his temples. The pale skin under his eyes showed
dark shadows. The hands now resting on the arms of the chair
trembled.

She sighed and got to her feet. “I can’t do
this.” She snagged her coat, shrugged into it and grabbed her purse
as she headed for the door, forgetting his advice about turning her
back on him. She whirled when she heard him following her, but no
threat showed on his ravaged face. Just worry.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Leaving. I can’t do this to you.”

His brows pulled together in a frown. He went
to the door, opened it and looked out. “It’s still snowing and
there are three inches or more on the ground already. You won’t
even make it back to your car in this.” He closed the door and
stood with his back against it. “Carol— It was Carol, right? A
Christmas Carol?” He managed a tight, painful grin. “You can’t go
now. It’s suicide. The weather’s deadly, it’s almost two o’clock in
the morning and I have no way to get help for you. Beside, I’d
rather you stay.”

“So you’ll have a convenient drink handy if
the thirst gets too much for you?”

He winced. “No. It’s just that… I just
realized… You’re not making it any harder. In fact— This is
selfish. So incredibly selfish. But I realized I don’t want to die
alone. And having you here reminds me why I’d rather die than
finish the transformation.”

She felt like kicking herself for the cruel
dig. He deserved better, if only for the two times he’d already
restrained himself with such effort.

The clock chimed the hour again. Two o’clock.
She was surprised at how fast the two hours since midnight had
passed while Michael told his story. She’d missed the bell for one
entirely, probably while he was telling his story. As if the
clock’s sound was a cue, the mist began to gather next to him in
the hall, coalescing rapidly into the form of Antoine again.

“Michael, that was sooooo sweet,” he said.
“If I could still cry, I probably would. How are you holding out,
by the way? Have the convulsions started yet?”

Antoine laughed at their expressions. “You
didn’t know about that? I suppose that means they haven’t. I’m too
early to enjoy the show. Oh, yes, it’s going to get very much worse
before you’re done.”

He looked at Carol. “I’m surprised you’re
still here. You’ve seen the monster in him, and in truth, as they
say, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.”

He laughed again. “Obviously I got here a bit
too early for the real entertainment. I’ll take my leave. But don’t
worry. I’ll be back when things get more interesting.”

Chapter
4

Once he was gone, Michael went to the
fireplace and piled a few more logs onto the waning blaze, allowing
Carol the choice of going outside anyway or coming back in without
his interference.

“He has a point,” Michael said, keeping his
back to her.

She watched him for a few minutes, while
debating pros and cons. Michael roused such contradictory emotions.
She pitied him, admired him and feared him. She wanted to hug him,
make him better. She wanted to run away and hide from him. She
hated the thought of him dying, but agreed it would be better than
the alternative. He fascinated her and horrified her at the same
time.

Given the weather, the time of day and the
empty countryside, running away might well kill her. Stay and he
might kill her. Which was more likely? Probably freezing to death.
She took her coat off. Only as she did that did she realize she
still held the wood stake he’d given her. She shifted it to her
other hand long enough to get her arms out of the sleeves, then she
returned to the chair in the living room.

Michael still stood at the fireplace,
prodding the blaze with the poker. After a moment, he straightened
and turned. “Thank you for staying.” His face looked even more
drawn than earlier and she suspected he was still in some pain.

“I debated which looked more immediately
fatal, you or the weather. The weather won.”

He tried for a grin and almost made it.

Carol tried to stifle a yawn and failed
completely.

“You’re tired. You want to take a nap? There
are several rooms made up upstairs. Let me show you.”

“Under the circumstances, I doubt I’d sleep a
wink. But it might be a good idea to show me where that room with
the sturdy lock is, in case I need it.”

He nodded and led the way out to the hall and
up the stairs.

“You seem to be pretty comfortable with
modern stuff,” she said as they climbed to the second floor. “I
noticed the TV and DVD. You have a dish too?”

Michael shrugged. “The satellite receiver?
Yes. I have a lot of time on my hands. It lets me keep up with
what’s going on in the world.”

“I know this is probably a rude question,
but… Where do you get the money?”

He turned to her and smiled. “It is a sort of
rude question. And a perfectly normal one. I’d be curious too. It’s
a bit complicated, of course, since legally I’m dead. But there are
ways. When I first returned here, it wasn’t hard at all since
everything was done in cash and you didn’t have all the paperwork
you do now. I managed to set up a bank account. I did odd jobs for
people that could be done at night. I began doing research on a
freelance basis and actually made quite a lot of money at that. I
also started investing in the stock market in the teens and put a
lot more in right after the depression. I saw lots of things
happening then. I had one big lucky break. I invested heavily in
Coca-Cola stock back in the late teens. That alone has made me
pretty well off today. But the research was pretty lucrative back
in the days before the Internet made information so widely and
easily available. I could travel very fast and communicate things
to others much more rapidly than they could get them by any other
means in those days. Now, there’s not much demand for it, but I can
live on what I’ve earned and invested.”

“What do you do when you have to file
paperwork and someone wants your birth date?”

He led her to an attractive room off the main
hall on the front side of the house. “This is the nice guest
bedroom and it has a good lock on the door. Deadbolt. But don’t
depend on that if you have to retreat here. Keep the stake handy
too. Vampires can be strong. Strong enough to knock down doors if
we get really desperate.” He stared hard at her, the blue of his
eyes shadowed and dark. “I may well get that desperate. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Stay here now, or come back downstairs?”

“Back downstairs,” she said. “For now.”

He nodded and led the way again. “The
documentation thing has been tricky,” he admitted. “Until the whole
immigration hubbub started, though, it wasn’t hard. I’ve had to die
and be reborn a couple of times, passing my estate on to my ‘heir’.
Fortunately I won’t have to worry about doing it again, since it
would be much harder now.”

As they got to the bottom of the stairs, he
asked, “Refill on the coffee?”

She considered the rest of the night—or more
accurately, early morning—that loomed ahead. “Yes, please.”

Again it struck her as funny that a vampire
who threatened her life should be so oddly polite at the same
time.

He went back to the kitchen and returned a
few minutes later with a pot of fresh coffee. After taking a moment
to pour her another cup, they sat down again.

She sought for a topic of conversation when
the silence stretched out a hair too long. “Tell me about your
family,” she asked. “How did you celebrate Christmas before?”

He made it to a real smile this time, though
it was gone within moments. “I had two brothers and a sister. I
left home for school at sixteen, but I always returned for the
holidays, even when I got my degree and moved to Atlanta—until that
last year, when I stayed to celebrate Christmas with Lucy’s family
and to propose to her.”

His face darkened for a moment until he
dismissed that memory to concentrate on happier ones. She watched
his expression lighten, erasing some of the deepest lines. “I had a
great family and Christmas was a wonderful time. My mother would
bake for a week ahead of time so we had an abundance of cakes, pies
and cookies. The house smelled unbearably wonderful with the aroma
of it. Of course, my brothers and I would sneak into the kitchen
every chance we got and try to snatch some. We got our hands
smacked for it a couple of times. My mother made the best sugar
cookies.

“And my father and I would go out on
Christmas Eve to find the perfect tree and bring it back. We had a
special bucket we’d put the cut end in, then shovel in enough dirt
all around it to hold it upright. In theory. In fact, it kept
tipping over. Or the tree would slide to one side… We had lots of
fun getting it to stand up straight. We had a couple of glass
ornaments my dad bought for my mom, but most of our decorations
were made of paper or beads or pieces of tin we cut and hammered
into different shapes. There was no electricity in this area in
those days and my dad wouldn’t risk putting candles on the tree
except for while we ate Christmas dinner.”

The fire popped and he turned to stare into
it for a moment. His voice changed, getting rougher and deeper when
he added, “I watched them afterward, though I tried not to get too
close. Watched the kids grow up, get married, have kids of their
own, mom and pop grow old and die, then the kids got old and died
and so did their kids…”

He looked at her, his eyes shadowed with
sadness. Tremors shook him periodically, but he didn’t mention them
or react except with an occasional sharp, indrawn breath. “The
worst, but in some ways also the best, memory of my undead time was
a Christmas about fifteen years after I’d been turned. I never feel
the cold or heat anymore, so I stood in the snow outside and looked
in and listened, though I made sure they didn’t see me.”

* * * * *

Children raced back and forth across the
room, sometimes scooting out to the porch, where the chill wind
soon fetched them back inside. They yelled with high spirits and
tried not to look too hard and too longingly at the pile of
colorfully wrapped packages under the Christmas tree. Three of the
children belonged to his brother John, two to David and one to his
sister, Jenny. Her handsome, sandy-haired husband held an infant
while Jenny helped his mother convey food from kitchen to the
table. John’s wife mashed potatoes in the kitchen, while David’s
stirred a pot of gravy.

Pop sat in a chair, with a blanket tucked
around him, watching the chaos of preparation and children’s play.
He looked thinner and grayer than Michael remembered. It shocked
him to realize Pop was an old man.

Once dinner was ready, everyone gathered
round the table. His father stood to say the blessing.