Death of an Immortal

Chapter 1 Terrill awoke to an empty mirror. Empty but for the bland motel décor: the disheveled bed, with its too many pillows and overstuffed bedspread; the innocuous framed picture of leaves on the wall. Empty, though the mirror was right in front of his face. She probably thought he was dead. Sometimes when he slept, he forgot to mimic the motions of breathing. She was probably trying to see if his breath would fog the mirror. Oh, God. Why had she done this? The part of him that was human struggled to control the part of him that was immortal. No! he shouted at himself in his mind. Leave her be! His vampiric instincts, the same instincts that had kept him alive for a millennium, were in full command. The small vessel of empathy he’d managed to fill, drip by drip, in recent years disappeared in an overpowering bloodlust. His fangs fully extended, dripping with the venom that would paralyze her. The little white hand holding the mirror looked bloodless, though Terrill had yet to take her blood. The female was naked and pale with fright from head to toe. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, her chest quivering. No predator could have passed up such a pure victim. Terrill instantly flushed with the thrill of the hunt, his sleepiness evaporating in a surge of hunger. Again his mind fought against his overwhelming urges. Don’t do it! Let her go! Let her live, damn you! She screamed, dropping the mirror to the floor with a crash. It shattered: seven years of bad luck—or in Terrill’s case, probably more like seven hundred years. In the girl’s case, it wasn’t even seven seconds. She made it halfway across the room before Terrill flew out of the bed and sank his fangs into her neck. Don’t…oh, God. It was so good. He had missed this so much. Why had she woken him? Why had she roused the monster inside him? His mind was still screaming Stop!, but now it was too late. Once a vampire started feeding, he couldn’t stop until he was finished. She was dead in seconds. Terrill saw himself in her dying eyes—the only way he could ever see his reflection. He hadn’t seen himself in twenty years. It didn’t matter; he still looked the same—sharp saturnine features, eyes glowing with bloodlust, frowning in his hunger, black hair immaculate even amid his wild feeding. He laid the girl’s lifeless body gently on the floor. Guilt wrapped around his shoulders like an old familiar shawl. He nearly staggered. Inside, he felt a savage rush, an exhilaration he hadn’t felt in a very long time. But the thinking part of him, the part to which he’d sacrificed the last twenty years, was sickened. It was gone; all his effort had come to nothing. He was the same soulless creature he’d always been. Nothing could change that. Joy. That was the name she’d given him. When she’d signed into the motel, she had used the name Jamie. She should have stuck to Jamie—a prettier name, a name that was real—just as she should’ve stuck to her hometown origins, gotten a job as a waitress, attended community college, met a nice, stupid boy—who knows where she would have ended up? Not here. Not dead. Her scream still hung in the air, and Terrill extended his hearing to the neighbors on either side and to the street outside. Nothing. The people who inhabited this seedy motel were no doubt used to screams in the night—and used to ignoring them. Quiet as a tomb, Terrill thought. He took a shower, got dressed, and left. Considerate of the people sleeping nearby, he closed the door quietly and walked softly down the rickety stairs and out into the empty street. He was always considerate. *** Terrill made it to the end of the block. The streetlamp was at half strength, flickering. There was a false dawn on the horizon, but real dawn would follow within the hour: in thirty-four minutes, to be exact. Terrill could calculate sunrise nearly to the second. He turned and walked back to the motel and made his way to the top of the landing. His senses were on full alert, but there was no one about, no one watching. He slipped back into the room. The girl lay in an unnatural tangle, her arms flung overhead, her legs drawn up behind her. Terrill straightened her body, smoothed her hair. He took the heavy bedspread and tucked it around her. He closed her frightened eyes. She was almost completely drained, but he was able to suck up one last mouthful of blood. He went to the bathroom and spit the blood into the bathtub drain. At the last second, he took her necklace from the table by the bed. The crucifix burned into his hand before he put it into his pocket. Even there, he could feel its power. Why had he taken it? He didn’t know. He just knew that he needed some part of her to come with him, and the crucifix had been important to her. He kissed her on the forehead and left the room in the same manner as before. Dawn glimmered in the east. The skin on Terrill’s face felt taut, as if preparing for the pain the sunlight would bring. His car was three blocks away. He made it just in time. The windows were tinted to just the right extent: he could see the light of dawn, he could even drive, but the burning—the hellfire—was held at bay. He crawled into the backseat and closed his eyes.