 “Hunting the Blue-Blooded”
(Excerpt)
by David M. Fitzpatrick
I fly now, alone, trying to think of
anything besides what happened tonight. I can’t.
I put on a burst of speed fueled by
immense, superhuman adrenaline, and angle up. My body skyrockets until the
lights of the city below are but so many eyes glowing up from a black hell
-- much like the way I feel; my damned, soulless self.
I can see the curvature of the earth on
this cool night, I am so high. Soon I won’t be able to. I’ll be dead
again, and others will build their cities upon that curvature.
I stop gaining altitude. It’s about a
half hour before sunrise, if I were on the ground. Higher altitude means
earlier sun-seeing. I am wracked with mixed emotions, and I remember
earlier this night, like some horrid daymare I’d rather forget. But this
was no dream... this was the near future rearing its proverbially ugly
head, as inescapable and sure as that sun will rise soon, whether I am on
the ground, in the air, or beneath the soil. Soon shall I meet such a sun,
grateful for the ultimate power it holds over me, and return to the earth:
ashes and dust.
* *
*
Alone I sped earlier that terrible night,
silent and black as the air that surrounded me, my lips parched and dry
from the cool winds of my flight that blasted them. Recounting the events
chills my heart with a different sort of cold than I’ve endured these past
seven centuries -- the cold of a sheer terror I have not had the occasion
to have visited upon me since I was first brought over so very long ago.
I flew, alone. Always I hunt alone; we
aren’t a pack mentality, like the lycanthropes. We congregate, bond, teach
and learn together; but when the hunt is on, it’s every one for himself.
The werewolves are team killers. I don’t envy them for their methodology,
but I do envy them for what is happening to us all. My kind will certainly
be no more, and very soon. The werewolves will undoubtedly be able to
survive, at least a little longer. Meat is meat, after all, once all the
blood is gone. Or will it be that way at all? They need only to tear and
rend flesh from bone to satisfy their desire, to eat that flesh to
survive. We just need blood. Red cells, white cells, platelets,
oxygen-rich, iron-based.
Woe to the vanquished, someone once said. Woe to us.
I sought, seeing the ground a thousand
feet below as if in daylight. As if I remember what that’s like.
Of course, I know now what daylight is
like. Now it’s burning alive under the fierce fires of the sun, terrible
azure skies like blue-hot flame to complement it, billowing clouds like
flying creatures taunting me. I’ve been caught after sunrise, and it’s the
hell you hear about for my kin. The movies make it out that one pretty
sunbeam will kick us out of the existence in a quick, disintegrating
POOF!; but it’s not quite like that. It’s like any mortal would be if you
stuck one in the oven and turned the broiler on to 500 degrees. You’d have
a little time to try and force the oven door open, but once the mercury
climbed high enough, you’d be burning.
Before my sire brought me over, the
daylight skies were important to me. A painter, I was, in Northern Italy
-- and a damn good artisan I was. The towering, majestic mountains, the
lush, green forests, and especially the beautiful blue skies, fluffy white
clouds, and that lovely golden sun -- all were absorbed by my awed eyes
and spewed forth from my fingers, out my brush, onto the canvas. The
hardest thing about becoming a creature of the night was the loss of my
days. I painted moonlit landscapes, starlit fields, cities of the night;
but for seven centuries of nothing but such features, I had long ago tired
of painting in grayscale.
When I watch a movie on my VCR, I am
forever rewinding and replaying sunsets and sunrises and shots of
beautiful days. I thought nothing would pain me quite like my lack of
days.
My eyes caught one of them alone. I
banked sharply and zeroed in on her. It looked female -- breasts are
breasts and hips are hips, but these days you never know what the boys are
stuffing their clothing with.
In moments I was close enough to smell
her: female, all right. Wearing some foul-smelling perfume. The scent of
alcohol, which explained her foolishness. And she was menstruating. Such
would be one of the last treats in a feast for me.
I swooped down, glided silently closer.
No sign of anyone. She was all alone, and this street was so dark. Surely
she must have been crazy. Most of them don’t believe in us, but there are
some serious bad-guy mortals out there, certainly in this big metropolis.
Her mistake. I wouldn’t take her life; we’ve such a bad reputation about
that. Too many vampires on this earth would make for too few humans.
I saw the overdone makeup from the side
as I banked in and was upon her. She saw me only as I was right there, and
she didn’t even look startled. She simply said, “Jack, fly?” Yes, that was
some drunk.
I wrapped around her as I flew, a black monsoon embracing, and swept her
stuttering, drunk form into the shadows of the alleyway ahead. She sprayed
me with a mouthful of rank spit and then I was dumping her on the ground,
straddling her midsection, her head gripped tightly between my powerful
hands. Somehow her dress had torn up the side and she was exposed. That
monthly woman thing was coming along nicely, to be sure, and she wasn’t
taking good care of her hygiene in her intoxicated state. So much the
easier.
“Jack...!” she slurred, trying to push up
against me, oblivious to the burning reds of my eyes. “Jack... get offen
me, not gonna mood tonight...”
She wouldn’t even remember it. I wouldn’t
have to help her forget. I growled like an animal anyway. She wasn’t
scared. I bared my teeth and dived for her throat, twin quarrels from a
crossbow finding their marks and sinking deep into her flesh.
She let out a sucking gasp, but the power
took over and she couldn’t move. I felt the flow of her blood fill my
mouth, pouring over my tongue, a waterfall of life force, rushing down my
throat. I sucked, a creature enraptured, forcing myself not to crush her
delicate head betwixt my hands.
I listened, drinking, to her heart.
Racing, proud and strong, pumping the blood through her tiny body and down
my throat. I could taste the alcohol -- not too bad, sort of like
sweetening the coffee with sugar. Her adrenaline level wasn’t too high,
but I wasn’t complaining. I muckled my lips tighter around my impaling
teeth, suckled more feverishly. She twitched a bit beneath my straddle,
her arms moving. It was reactionary. Her throat was mine to feed from, her
blood mine to feast on. She was mine.
I was lost a bit myself. There has always
been a powerful eroticism in the act of drinking blood; something I
suppose you wouldn’t begin to understand unless you were a vampire. At
first, seven hundred years ago, the idea repulsed me, but to survive I
eventually had to drink. Once I did... my victim, blood pumping into me,
her body trapped beneath me, her mind submissive and open -- it was better
than any friendship, any family, any sexual experience I had ever had. And
had been since, night after night, over a quarter of a million nights.
I reached my peak and exploded, a sort of
orgasm of mind and body, an incredible sensation of ultimate achievement,
of domination, of content. I exhaled finally, carefully withdrawing from
her throat, and closed my eyes. Relax. Regain strength. She would sleep a
while...
I heard him then, behind me. He’d come
very close. Our hearing is better than that of any dog’s, but so involved
had I been in my joining that I had not heard him. I lifted my head,
straightened my back as I sat atop her, and turned my face about. The dim
light on my pale face and red eyes would certainly make whoever it was
think twice about even coming near us, never mind the blood on my lips. I
showed my teeth to him as he stood quietly watching from fifteen feet
away.
“Good evening, citizen,” I said
menacingly, blood trickling down my chin. “Come closer.”
He regarded me in a way no other human
ever had once knowing who and what I was, and unless this person were very
culturally devoid, he had to be making some sort of connection -- to a
movie, a childhood story, anything. But he didn’t. He stood with his arms
to his sides, wearing a nondescript one-piece blue jumpsuit, head cocked
to his right and bearing a look of confusion on his face. He didn’t come
closer.
“Why do you do this?” he said simply.
I rose, wishing I had a Dracula-esque
cloak to flourish; but only black jeans, black pullover, black sneakers. I
flared my teeth some more, stepped forward that the light from the street
might illuminate me a little better. I wanted him to be sure of the eyes,
the fangs, and the blood now drooling down my chin. “You’re next, mortal,”
I said viciously.
He regarded me, unafraid. “You bit her
neck. You swallowed blood from her body. Is she dead?”
He was certainly a bold one. I admit to a
bit of confusion on my own part. “Of course she isn’t. I’m not in the mood
to be siring another of us tonight.”
“Siring another of you?” He cocked his
head in interest. By now I was standing before him, only three or four
feet separating us. “You’re not like them, are you?”
I laughed, trying to sound menacing, but
something inside me was unsettled. Maybe it was the way he seemed
interested, the way he was uncaring of who and what I was. The way he just
wasn’t scared.
“Of course I’m not, mortal.” I was still
dazed from my feeding, my senses impaired, and I couldn’t smell him -- his
body, his blood.
“Why did you swallow her blood?” he
repeated.
It was all I was about to take. I widened
my eyes, hissing, “Because I was hungry, fool -- and I’m not full yet!”
I moved like a hurricane, crossing the
few feet before he could blink, and I was upon him. I wrapped an arm about
him, grabbed his head with my free hand, and brutally whipped his head
aside to expose his neck. I growled again, dived for his throat. Sunk my
teeth in for the second helping that night.
I should have known something was amiss
when I couldn’t smell him. I had attributed it to deadened sense from my
feeding frenzy, but even still, that close to him, I should have been able
to pick up the scent of his blood. My teeth tore deep into the flesh on
his throat, and his skin seemed tougher than the average mortal’s. I’m a
very powerful creature, of course, so I simply tore right through until I
felt hot liquid against my tongue. I sucked, long and deep. His life juice
thundered down my throat.
I choked. My tongue burned. Shocked, I
tore my mouth away even as the man began to holler. I was still gripping
him about his back and head and I spitting the vile blood from my mouth
when he hit me. I felt the impact on my chest and I was airborne, not of
my own control. I hit the ground and rolled, dazed.
I was on my face, trying to get to my
knees, choking and coughing and spitting it all out. I watched the gobs of
ooze splattering the ground inches from my face -- not the red, salty
drink I was used to, but far different. First, it had burned like
sunlight. Second, it had tasted like... anything but blood. Sort of like
curdled milk. And third, it wasn’t red, not even close. The thick,
congealed substance spewing forth from my mouth was bright blue. Somehow,
though, it was blood. It looked different, was thick and textured like hot
butterscotch, and smelled all wrong, but some of the horrid stuff had
gotten down my gullet and I felt the familiar feeling -- albeit bizarre --
of the satisfaction of the feast.
“You bit my own throat,” he said from
behind me, and I heard his footsteps approaching. “I was willing to learn
from you, but since you’re all going to die anyway...”
He was coming for me; I could hear his
footsteps as I hacked in my sickness. I had to recover, had to get
control--
“...I’ll happily start with you...”
I shook my vision back to normal and got
fully to my knees even as he reached me, his foot flying out to kick my
ribs. I was fast, of course, very strong, and ready this time. I locked
all the joints and muscles in my powerful body and took his kick. It hurt,
very badly, stronger than any human ever was, but I withstood it. At fifty
miles per hour from a standstill, my hand rocketed back and grabbed his
leg, yarding it out from beneath him. He went over backwards and thudded
the pavement.
I was on my feet the next second,
standing over him. I was ready to kill this thing, whatever he was, and
then I saw the wound on his neck, oozing blue crap everywhere -- but it
was closing up. I watched, stunned, as the wound healed right before my
vampiric eyes. It was faster, even, than one of my kind.
“I am beginning to piece this together,” he said calmly from the ground.
“I think we are both wondering the same thing: if neither of us is human,
then what are we?”
I had to admit, the thought was crossing
my mind. “Your blood is not human,” I said quietly. “I listen now, and can
not hear your heartbeat. I smell nothing of you that is familiar. And you
are far stronger than any human.”
He raised his arm to his face, looked at
some wristwatch he was wearing, and tapped a button on its face. “You,
too, are stronger than any human,” he noted. “I’m reading your blood as
nothing quite like any living thing on this planet. It has elements of all
human types -- A, B, AB, and O -- but no Rhesus factors. Something very
different--”
I stepped back. Something told me to fear
this thing, but I didn’t want to. Seven hundred years of unliving hell,
deprived of the bright days that were once my only love, I was damned if I
would allow anyone -- anything -- to not fear me. “How do you know this?”
He moved to sit up, leaning back on one
hand, smiling up at me from his wristwatch from another. “I’m not that
well-versed, really. My uplink compared your body stats with the
information in our master computer. It’s telling me that the most logical
deduction it can come up with is that you are a... a vampire. A mythical
creature that drains the blood from humans and can turn them into such. It
seems that this part of folklore has a bit of truth about it.”
My mind swam. I took another step
backward. My ferocity was draining. “Then you have me at a disadvantage.”
He smiled and worked his way to his feet.
Everything in me told me to strike him down, put everything I had into it,
and tear him limb from limb. Like those damned lycanthropes. I wasn’t
interested in feasting, not anymore. I wanted this inhuman bastard dead.
Odd, how often my kin have been referred to as inhuman bastards. Irony, et
cetera.
* *
* * * * * *
*
Our antihero has one option: use his
vampiric powers to probe the mind of this alien creature... and discover
that the alien's intentions are far more horrifying than anything a race
of vampires could to to all of Earth.
Night to Dawn is no longer
available. I'll save this one for an anthology! |
Angela Kessler from the vampire magazine
Dreams of Decadence told me she liked this one, but the science
fiction tale intertwined with the vampire story ultimately killed it. She
said she'd read and re-read it, but finally decided it wasn't quite right
for DoD. Can't blame the woman for staying true to her vision.
Anyway, Dawn Callahan at the former Night to Dawn had no qualms
with the SF aspects, and ran this one.