Death of an Immortal

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“So what’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Really? Do people really ever give you their real name?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I can tell something about them by the name they do give me.”

“Then...my name is Ted.”

She looked sad. Genuinely sad. As if she actually cared about a stranger she’d met in a bar—a meal ticket, a John.

Curious, he asked, “What does that tell you?”

“You want to be ordinary. You want to stay home and watch TV, eat at McDonald’s, gain fifty pounds and live out your life.” She eyed his lean, tall frame, his impeccably tailored suit, his razor-sharp haircut, his manicured nails. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but he seemed so much older. “Everything you aren’t...”

***

Terrill slept less than an hour: forty-five minutes, to be exact. He woke snarling, his jaw protruding, his fangs exposed, his claws extended.

There was knocking at the car window, and through it, he could see the outline of a head, wearing a hat he recognized as a policeman’s cap. He calmed himself. For a thousand years, he had never been able to restrain that first impulse after discovery—the impulse to kill, to feed. It was only in the last few centuries that he’d been able to control it at all.

Terrill breathed deeply as the knocking increased in force and tempo. He gauged the height of the sun, the slant of its rays, the distance he needed to maintain. He positioned himself about halfway across the backseat from the window, and reached over and hit the button. He retracted his hand just in time as the window rolled down.

The light hit the first quarter of the seat full on; the next quarter was in the shade, but still burned. He slid over about an inch, and it was tolerable.

“This is a no-parking zone,” the cop said. He was beefy, red-faced, and exactly the type of prey Terrill had always preferred: someone who could, on a good day and with immense luck, actually hurt him — although it hadn’t happened yet.

“I was getting way too sleepy last night,” Terrill said. “I decided it might be safer to pull over and get some rest.”

The policeman radiated skepticism; he probably met every response from every citizen with the same attitude. It made the guilty squirm, no doubt. Terrill kept his face bland and the cop finally shrugged. So far, so good, Terrill thought.

“Well, that’s a good idea, sir,” the cop said. “I applaud you for it. But you need to move along.”

“Thanks. I will.” It was a rare sunny fall day in Portland. Terrill had gravitated to the coastal Northwest because such days were unusual. The rain and clouds, the fog and the mists—all were perfect for him.

Terrill didn’t move. He couldn’t move. Climbing into the front seat would necessitate moving into direct sunlight. So he busied himself with straightening his clothes, smoothing his hair, smiling at the cop.

“May I see your driver’s license and registration?” The officer sounded exasperated.

While the policeman had been thinking about his next move, Terrill had reached into his pocket, taken out his gloves, and put them on. He angled himself over the seat, trying not to look too awkward. The angle was wrong and as he struggled with the latch of the glove compartment, his sleeve rode up his forearm and he felt the sharp pain of long-dead flesh exposed to sunlight. Finally, he snatched his registration and fell back into shadow, and the pain immediately subsided as his arm healed. He handed the documents over to the cop carefully, making sure every inch of skin was covered.

Meanwhile, he casually looked around at the neighborhood. Cops always attracted attention. There would be people watching this, from the corners of their eyes, glad it wasn’t them who had been stopped. Terrill practiced the attack in his mind: reaching out and grabbing the cop’s head, twisting his neck before the man could make a sound, leveraging the body swiftly through the window, closing the window, and scrambling over the seat and driving away.

He reached into the light and opened the window the last couple of inches. Again the sleeve rode up and exposed part of his arm, and he grimaced at the pain. The cop was still examining the papers.

Terrill waited for the words “Would you please step outside, sir?”

Ironically, fully opening the window seemed to reassure the cop, as if it had somehow made Terrill less of threat. The cop handed him back his papers, even going so far as to reach in enough for Terrill to take them without extending his arm into the light again.

“Have a good day,” the cop said.

“Thank you. I will.”

Terrill maneuvered himself over the center console and plopped into the driver’s seat, but not before his right cheek was exposed to full sunlight for a second. It sizzled and smoked. He put his gloved hand to his face and looked at the policeman, who was looking at the traffic instead.

He started the car and put it into gear.

“One more thing,” the cop said.

Terrill almost pulled away, because the officer had that warning tone in his voice again.

“You need to have your rearview mirror unobstructed.”

The mirror was covered with one of Terrill’s many hats, which he had casually hung there. Terrill reached up and removed it, hoping the cop wasn’t looking directly in the mirror. But the officer had already lost interest and was waving him on.

Terrill eased into traffic. He headed east on Burnside Street, and when he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw that the cop was following him. He kept heading east, finally reaching the airport and turning into the parking lot. The police car kept going.

Terrill sat back and closed his eyes.

Time to leave town? He always left town after a kill.

He’d stayed in Portland longer than anywhere else. Twenty years of drinking cow’s blood and that of an occasional stray dog. Twenty years of existing peacefully among humans.

Damn her. Why had she woken him like that? What had made her suspect him? And why couldn’t he have had just a second to think, to pause, before he killed her?

“Jamie Howe,” she had written on the motel registration form. A small-town girl, too honest to lie even for one evening, except to her John, and even then, she had caught him looking and shrugged at him with a wistful smile.

He pulled out his phone and looked her up. There was a Jamie Lee Howe from Bend, just on the other side of the Cascade mountain range. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed southeast toward Mount Hood.

Terrill had sworn he would never kill again. But he had. He was still vampire, not human. All he could do now was try to make up for it somehow, to make amends to the girl’s family and friends. To rebuild what little shreds of humanity he still contained by learning all he could about Jamie Lee Howe. Who was she, and how had she ended up in the bed of a vampire?