Vampire U (7 page)

Tall weeds pushed through the blacktop, and I thought that in another ten years, it would be an empty field centered on a decaying mountain of steel.  As I crossed the lot and circled around behind the screen, I saw that the concrete expanse continued onward a hundred feet past the screen.  It occurred to me that no one could get close without walking through a broad expanse of daylight.

Should be safe from vampires,
 I thought, then scoffed at my own paranoia.  Ignoring my bleak, strange thoughts, I hurried along the side of a long, low building of corrugated metal.  The service door stood slightly ajar, and I went to it and stuck my head in.  My eyes, used to the bright sunlight, could see only an impenetrable gloom.  Feeling foolish, I called out.  "Mander?"

"Come inside, Danielle."  That smooth, commanding voice again, like a clear bell in the hazy fog of my memories and dreams.  For a moment, I stood on the threshold, savoring the feeling of sunlight on my skin.  Then I stepped into the dark.

Mander hissed as I pushed the door open, spilling a wedge of sunlight across a gray concrete floor.  "Shut the door behind you."

I did, plunging the room into near-complete darkness.  Only the tiniest sliver of light penetrated the crack beneath the door.  Mander's form was a vague shadow, tall and lean, but his presence called to me like a beacon.  After all that had happened, Morgan's strange affliction, Kara Thompson's screaming insanity, almost getting my car crushed by a truck, I didn't want to be alone.  Like a child running to her father's safe embrace, I ran to Mander, and relief swept over me as he pulled me into his arms.

I burrowed against his chest as tears welled in my eyes.  His body was cool to the touch, but the passion in his arms held a warmth of its own that stirred something inside me.  Instinct took over, and I lifted my face to his.  My lips parted as he bent his head, and we kissed.  I hadn't planned this, hadn't even spared a thought for my attraction to a man I hardly knew.  The night before was like the scrambled remnants of a dream, but when Mander's mouth met mine, memories of Beta House flooded back, no longer hazy, but crystal clear.  The sound and sight of the Equinox Ball.  Morgan and Vic in the bedroom.  Alex stalking me.  Mander's parting kiss before he put me in my car and sent me away.

A numb shock of astonishment filled me.  It was all real.  Everything I'd seen and felt.  Beta House wasn't just a fraternity full of rich studs.  They were...

I broke away from Mander's kiss, gasping for air.  Despite my alarm, a warm, urgent sensation stirred between my legs.  My voice felt thick with lust as I looked up into the dark, unknowable pools of his eyes.  "What are you?"

"You know," Mander said.

Finally, a door opened in my mind, one I'd held shut tight against the weight of an unbelievable truth.  I stopped trying to deny my own memories, my own eyes and ears.  I recognized the strangeness of how I'd felt around Mander and Alex, my will pulled this way and that like a puppet on a string.  I was out of rational explanations.

"A vampire," I said in a hushed whisper full of reverence and fear.

Mander nodded in the dark.

"H... how?  I never believed."

Mander pressed a fingertip to my lips, silencing me.  Its coolness sent a shiver down my spine.  "If people believed, we would be dead.  Our survival depends on secrecy."

I snorted, remembering the extravagance of the Equinox Ball.  "Last night wasn't exactly discreet."

Mander shook his head.  "Some of my brethren have let their greed and lust drive them to take risks.  They've grown reckless."

"You drink blood," I said.  "You feed on college girls."  A wave of revulsion swept over me as I remembered Vic's teeth sinking into Morgan's neck.

Mander felt me shrink away.  "It is what we are, Danielle.  Would you blame a wolf for killing a lamb?  At least we leave our victims alive."

"I met one of your 'lambs' earlier.  She'd be better off dead."

I felt a strange pressure in my head, so light I might have missed it, like a fingertip brushing against the hairs on the back of my neck.  "Kara Thompson," Mander said.  "A sad woman.  She wasn't one of mine.  Most recover.  Kara is what happens when one of us drinks too deeply."

I shivered.  "You were inside my mind?"

"Yes, but I also had you followed," Mander said.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the door.  Despite all my paranoia, I'd never noticed a tail.  "By whom?"

  "A local private investigator.  He's done odd jobs for me for a long time.  I can't move about in daylight, for reasons any child knows.  I have to rely on others."

"So why have me followed if you knew I was coming here?"

"I needed to be sure you were safe," he said.

"Safe from what?"

Mander's face darkened.  "Alex Golov.  You met him last night."

"The guy who stalked me.  Alex.  You're saying he's a vampire too?"

Mander nodded.  "Every member of Beta House is a vampire, Danielle.  Alex is the most powerful of my brethren, a 
de facto
 leader, if you will, although we all submit to the Elder.  It is unfortunate that Alex noticed you.  But then, he has always been drawn to virgins."

My jaw dropped.  "I'm not a..."  I started to deny it, but as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw Mander raise a dubious eyebrow.  "How did you know?" I finished in a quiet voice.

"I can't explain it, Danielle.  I just know."  It occurred to me that Mander must have been waiting here since dawn.  He'd gone to extremes to make sure that he could talk to me without any other vampires hearing what he had to say.

My mind spun.  I needed to sit down, but the dark chamber beneath the Terrebonne's screen held no furniture.  I leaned my back against the wall and slumped to the dusty floor, bracing myself for the answer that really mattered.  "And what reason is that?"

"I need your help," Mander said.

"My... what?"  I laughed.  "This is all too much.  Why 
my
 help?  I'm nobody special."  My eyes had grown somewhat accustomed to the dark, and I stared at Mander's silhouette, confused.

"We feed to survive, Danielle.  Blood sustains us, but the women we feed on grow to need us.  Being harvested becomes an addiction for them, but it also makes them want us in... other ways."

I remembered Vic's triumphant smile the moment before he sunk his teeth into Morgan's neck, the way her body shuddered with ecstasy as he drank her blood.

A numb sensation spread through my chest.  "And that's why you invited me to the Ball?  To 
feed
 on me?"  The accusation felt hollow even as I spat the words at Mander.

He shook his head.  "The power we hold over women can be intoxicating, and sometimes my brothers overindulge.  The Betas have grown decadent.  They think themselves safe here, drinking blood and enjoying the sexual attentions of an endless stream of young women.  And for decades, they've been right.  But times are changing, Danielle.  Between the internet and smartphones, it won't be long before someone spots the pattern."

"I already have," I said.  "Used-up women who wander around like junkies."  I thought of Morgan, so pale and weak, probably still lying in bed, waiting for Vic to feed on her again.  "Morgan... you knew they would take her?"

Mander stared at me for a long moment, then nodded.

I thought of the contrast between my ebullient roommate and the pale husk I'd left that morning.  Suddenly, my face burned with a hard anger, and I leapt to my feet.  Growling, I threw myself at the vampire, pummeling him with my fists.  "You bastard!  How could you?  You have no right!"  I punctuated every word with a punch or a slap, but Mander stood unmoving, silently weathering the abuse as I pounded him.  I may as well have tried to beat up a granite statue.  Soon my knuckles ached and my palms stung from my relentless onslaught.  Breathless and exhausted, my attacks slowed as my temper burned itself out.

My eyes blurred with tears, and I realized I was sobbing.  I threw my hands at his chest in one last weak lunge, and Mander wrapped me into his arms.  In that moment, I wanted to hate him, but a warm comfort spread through my body like blood through water.

"I'm sorry about your friend," Mander said softly in my ear.  "But she is one woman.  Countless more will suffer unless we take action.  If Morgan Brewer's suffering makes you more committed to what we must do, it will be worth it.  We have to succeed, Danielle."

"What do you want from me?" I said, resting my head against his chest.  A distracted thought flitted through my mind - I couldn't hear his heartbeat.  He didn't have one.

"I want you to help me destroy Beta House," Mander said.  "Morgan can be free.  They can all be free.  But I can't do it without you."

I looked up into his eyes and shook my head.  "I don't understand.  How?  And why me?"

Mander started to speak, then froze.  "Shh!" he said, then cocked his head, listening.

"Mander, what...  Hey!"  He grabbed my waist with both hands, and my feet suddenly lifted off the floor.  Mander heaved, and my body felt weightless for a moment.  The dark room spun around me, and I hit the floor and slid along on my bottom, stopping near the door.

"Get outside!" he shouted as he retreated into a corner.

I lay on the floor, astonished by the strength in his arms.  Before I could ask what was happening, I heard the scream of an engine, loud and growing louder.  Its roar became an ear-shattering crash as something smashed into the front of the building, directly across from the door.  Corrugated sheet metal screamed as it bent inward, and the hood of a black van burst through the wall where Mander and I had stood just moments before. 

The van's rear section was a windowless box, and the dark tint on its windshield gleamed like the carapace of an armored scarab beetle.  Bright daylight poured into the hole the van had punched in the wall, gleaming on exposed steel where the van's impact had scratched the paint.  Thick dust from the impact glowed in the sunbeams.  On the other side, Mander flattened himself against the opposite wall, recoiling from the rays of light.

The van shifted into reverse and backed out of the hole, and the room grew brighter.  I took a cautious step forward, meaning to look outside.

"Stay back!  Get out of here!" Mander yelled.  Then the van's engine revved, and it smashed the building again, closer to Mander this time, destroying more of the wall and widening the hole.  One of the steel structural beams bent from the impact, and I heard a low, ominous groaning sound from somewhere above.

More sunlight poured into the room now.  Mander's skin looked bleached as he pulled himself deeper into the shadows.  Sunlight.  If it touched him, would he die?

If Mander died, what would happen to Morgan?  To me?

The van backed out again, but now I understood that it would come back for another attack.

"Who are they?" I shouted.

"My brothers," Mander said.  "You need to go, Danielle!  I'll find you soon."

"They're going to kill you!" I cried.

Mander snarled in frustration as he paced back and forth like a caged lion, trapped in a diminishing pool of darkness now.  The van roared, and we both flatted ourselves against the wall.

Again it hit the building in a blast of screeching metal, opening the hole even wider as it punched through closer to Mander.  He only had a few feet of darkness left now.  Another pass, and he'd have nowhere to hide from the bright afternoon sun.  Above us, the building's walls seem to stretch and groan as the tall screen's tethers weakened.  The van's gears grinded as its driver tried to shift into reverse.  The repeated impacts had taken their toll on the transmission.

Whatever he'd done, Mander was my only ally.  I couldn't let him die here.  The sliding rear door of the van was just ten feet away.  I darted forward into the light and grabbed the handle, twisting it upward as I threw the door open.

I hadn't known what to expect, I'd only hoped to distract the driver long enough for Mander to find some way to escape.  Mander had told me what he was, but no words could have prepared me for what I saw in the van.

At first, the driver and the two young men in the rear compartment looked like frat boys with their nice chinos, crisp clean polo shirts, and fashionably shaggy hair.  Then they spun to face me, and I saw the truth.  Red, hungry eyes blazed in their gaunt, pale faces, and they fixed me with baleful glares that made my courage wither.  I leaned against the door for support, my brain gibbering madly that I wanted to be anywhere else in the world even as my body refused to move.

One of the vampires leapt at me, an instinctive act of aggression that cost him - it - dearly.  Its clawed hands passed into the sunlight as he lunged for my throat, and pale flesh sizzled and charred as if he'd shoved his arms into a furnace.  The vampire screamed in rage and pain as its arms disintegrated.  The rest of its body followed shortly, igniting in a violent pyre of hot flesh that burned like phosphor for a few seconds before turning to chunks of ash.  The remains of his body crumbled before my eyes as the van filled with a thick, greasy smoke.

I stood paralyzed, watching as the other vampire scrambled backward to flatten itself against the wall of the van, hissing in rage as it shrunk from the bright light between us.  The driver turned in his seat and saw his comrade melting, and he opened his door and scrambled out of the van, taking shelter in the darkness on the far side.

Big mistake.

I heard a strangled, inhuman scream, and something hit the van hard enough to rock it back and forth.  The metal panel behind the driver's seat bent inward like a kicked trashcan.  A moment later, something sailed over the van and into the light.

I caught a glimpse of flailing limbs and pastel clothing an instant before the van's driver flew into the sunlight and burst into flame.  Entranced, I followed his arc as he flew over me like a blazing meteor, flames consuming his body with amazing speed.  What hit the ground behind me looked like someone had emptied the ashes out of a barbeque grill.

I turned back to the open van, where the third vampire sat trapped.  He had nowhere to go.  Sunlight prevented him from escaping on the left, and Mander waited in the darkness behind him.

Everything had happened so fast, but now I got my first look at the vampire.  I recognized his face; I'd seen him at the Equinox Ball with a nubile redhead on his lap.  The Brad Pitt clone.  He didn't look like a handsome actor now.  He didn't speak, but his eyes locked on mine, bloody red orbs full of hate, not the eyes of a man, but those of a demon.  I should have recoiled, but I felt suddenly at peace.  In a daze, I wondered why I'd ever feared these creatures.  I wanted to climb into the van with him, to let him wrap his arm around me.

As I stepped toward the van, I recognized the tug of someone else steering my mind, and I struggled to resist.  I knew that crawling into the van would mean death or worse, but my feet kept moving even as I fought back with all my willpower.

The vampire's mouth opened in a slow grin that revealed long, sharp fangs.  I knew they waited for me, but I couldn't stop myself.  I put one foot up into the van, and the vampire spread his arms wide, ready to embrace me.  Another few inches...