Every bloodsucker she’d interacted with went shaky-psycho when they got close to murder, and Simone didn’t have time to think about whysheseemed to have missed that boat.
It could be a function of accumulated age? Or maybe she just didn’t notice her own altered perceptions. Both horrifying prospects, to be sure.
Getting her prey to the town limits was simply a matter of running fast enough; a carefully chosen gully yawed to her right, precisely on schedule. She plunged into its arms, twisted in midair, bounced from side to near-vertical rocky side, dodged half-seen or merely sensed obstacles, and when he attempted to hit her from behind she was almost,almostsurprised.
But not entirely, and she had a bit of experience nowadays when it came to ripping up vampires. Plus, visiting this very ravine right after dusk had given her a good idea of its layout—not to mention the tangle of abandoned barbwire rusting comfortably in its crooked elbow, perhaps deposited by a long-ago flash flood.
She dropped flat just in time; the blond bastard sailed right over her into the mess. A yip like a surprised coyote, followed by a thrashing and a sweetly metallic scent.
More blood.Vampireblood.
Okay, he’s not so old as I thought. Great. But she couldn’t wait around for a motherfucker to die of tetanus.
He stagger-streaked from the iron cobweb-tangle, arms outstretched and claws out. Her own fingernails were extended—tough, razor-sharp, and more than ready.
The hardest part was shoving away a lifetime’s worth of training—you can’t do that, girls don’t hit people. Use your words. Be nice!
Fortunately, her body’s hateful new instincts knew what to do. She just had to get out of the way.
Plus, before catching a bad case of vamp-itis she’d been on the downhill side of fifty and the rocks of a bad divorce besides. There wasn’t a lot ofniceleft in Simone Deschants, taking her maiden name back in a big way and dodge-weaving close, left hand flickering to open up a big ol’ steaming rip in the monster’s guts.
During each and every fight she remembered the thing that had infected her, how it had screamed when morning sunshine filtered through the church basement window. She heard those cries once more as she tore at the drunk-staggering bloodsucker, ducking and bobbing, claws ripping over and over until finally, eventually the wet rot racing through its tissues turned to glittering dust.
Another monster wentpoof, caving in as she caused more damage than preternatural flesh could heal until nothing was left but irritating iridescent particles, grit working itself finer and finer into every crevice. Simone backed toward the gully’s wall, rubbing her hands together frantically, shaking out her hair, and finally brushing at her clothes with maybe a little more force than necessary.
The grainy stuff itched, but only briefly. Worst of all was the way her conscience dug its spurs in. Maybe this guy had been attacked one night, turned just like her, and was only trying to survive. Maybe one day Simone herself would go nuts from thethirst’s constant scratching and have to be put down like a rabid dog.
She leaned against the ravine’s wall, ribs heaving though the fight was indisputably over. “Sorry,” she heard herself whisper, over and over. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I hope it’s better now. I hope you’re at peace.”
A crowd of dry, twinkle-giggling stars watched avidly from overhead, along with the low-hanging, evil-grinning gibbous moon. Neither cared about her silly little emotional pangs. Good ol’ Ma Nature was beautiful, sure, but she was also a stone-cold bitch. Maybe vampires were simply an evolutionary niche, biology getting day-drunk and deciding to have a little fun.
Simone let the soft, frantic catechism of regret drain away as she braced herself against the ravine’s wall, calculating the hours left until dawn.
Just enough time to get home and check in.
CHAPTER 2
Taverns,hostelries, inns as a whole smelled far better than they used to, or perhaps his nose was simply dulled with age. Yet the wanderer hesitated before crossing the street, forcing himself tofocusthrough the shifting, distracting kaleidoscope of night’s wonders.
Neon signs buzz-blinking, shower-shadows of multicolored light competing with the lamps and blinking traffic-control devices. Arteries and veins of paving turning to dirt as they unraveled from the township-clot, starred at the margins with houses staring blankly at wonderful vistas of grass and weather. A cool breeze redolent of plain and mountain, thick with the ever-present tinge of car exhaust. Mortal heartbeats thundering through the mechanical cascade of pipes, buzzing galvanism, tinny music, chatter, and clatter; the song of wind through tall grass and quiet murmur of high-summer watercourses diving for shelter providing orchestral backdrop.
The wilderness called; for a creature so old and frayed, solitude was an imperfect refuge at best. Yet that was better than the alternative. He almost turned to stride away beforeremembering his purpose once more—a stranger, anintrudertainting his current territory.
The fractures and slippage weren’t so bad here. In mortal cities the crowding of prey was a constant quasi-irritation; in these lightly settled environs, however, he could visit a few isolated homesteads upon an eve, feeding carefully to avoid glut. Or he could simply linger unseen outside one of four taverns, harvesting the drunken, leaving them weakened yet still breathing. The effort of restraint helped fight the accretion of mental and physical dust upon his joints and brain-folds, hardening slowly to stone, but the wanderer suspected he might be too old to die in the usual manner of his kind.
After all, neither the great fire of the Sun nor open flame itself could kill him. Hazily he remembered how he had discovered the latter fact and shuddered, his fingers driving into the crumbling concrete flank of what had possibly once been a greengrocer’s as he tarried in comfortable shadow, again attempting to remember why he was here, now, in this particular place.
Intruder.He clung to the single word, the concept threatening to slip from a mental grasp grown increasingly clumsy—and worse, timorous.
The process was accelerating. He would soon be too slow and absent to survive even a fledgling’s attack, unless mere reflex was enough to ward off such an ignoble end. An elderly, arthritic dragon, shambling through the dust-heap of centuries—no, adinosaur, that was a good concept, meaty, endlessly interesting. Was he ancient enough to remember such beasts?
It seemed likely. He remembered thinking the mortals’ steam-carriages were like unto wyrms, snorting and heaving, and fleeing at least one of the things not so very long ago. But no, there was another word for it—train, like a noblewoman’s dress or retinue, like teaching tricks to a dumb beast. In otherlanguages the connections were different; he had to focus hard upon the current tongue.
Once again the wanderer almost turned away. Later he might brood upon how close he had been to failure, true-death, the treasure whispering past his aching, clumsy fingertips. But at the last moment, recognition of the insult arrived once more—a trespasser, an interloper in the small realm of one who had survived open flame, by the thunderbolt, by the wounds of God!
So he forded the street’s cracked pavement river and pushed at the caupona’s door…
No.Taverndoor, this was a watering-hole, not a sleeping-place. The close, almost-pleasant fug of mortal breath and yeasty inebriation puffed outward in a silken cloud. A golden thread buried in the breeze’s depth halted him upon the threshold, a long glassy moment between screaming chaos and a precious, crystalline moment of lucidity.
