Death of an Immortal

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

As he drove up the Mount Hood pass, the thick forests of the Cascade Mountains reminded Terrill of the old Black Forest of his youth. He was comfortable with the shadows, the darkness of the rocks and streams. Once, upon arriving in the Northwest, he had experimented by bundling up and walking the Pacific Crest Trail in daytime, just to see if he could do it. He had gone for miles, evading sunlit areas, hopping from shadow to shadow. He loved the rain and the thick growth of trees and vegetation.

He had never been east of the summit.

At the top of the pass, the trees changed—within seconds, it seemed—from thick fir forests with heavy underbrush to larger and more expansive ponderosa pines with little undergrowth.

The air became dry, fragrant with the smells of pine needles and bitterbrush. The sun seemed brighter and lower to the earth.

Terrill almost turned around. He could do nothing to bring the girl, Jamie, back. What would he accomplish by putting himself in danger? In the rearview mirror, he saw comfortably slate-gray skies with dotted trails of rain clouds overhanging the Willamette Valley. Ahead, he saw brightness and danger.

The High Desert, a part of the Great American Basin, was something he’d purposely avoided, flying over by airplane every time he needed to travel. East of Bend, he knew, were miles and miles of lava rock slopes, filled with low, scraggly juniper trees and dry, woody sagebrush. He felt exposed just thinking about it.

Vampires thrived in the visceral fluids of men and of the earth; in the darkness and the cover of the cities, in dark and rainy forests and mountains. They avoided the sparseness of small towns, where a local might be immediately missed and a stranger immediately suspected. Above all, vampires avoided the sun.

Terrill pulled over to the side of the road.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked himself out loud.

He could turn around, head farther north, into Olympic National Park and on to the equally rainy Seattle area. It wasn’t too late.

***

“Where are you from?” Jamie asked. It was after their first lovemaking session. She had started off stiff and uncomfortable, but his need had been great and he had ignored her discomfort at first. Then something had changed inside him, and he had slowed down and tried to bring her along with him. That had never happened before. He took what he needed and wanted from humans, without caring whether they liked it.

But he had to admit, it had been a more satisfying experience somehow when she had climaxed with him…or at least pretended to. She was a w***e, he reminded himself.

“Nowhere and everywhere,” he answered finally.

“That’s too bad,” she said. She frowned.

“Why?” he asked. Most people were intrigued by his answer, envious of his world-weary traveler pose, but she seemed almost to pity him.

“I love Bend, my hometown. It’s the best of all worlds. It has everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Yet here you are, in Portland.”

“Only for awhile. I’ll go back as soon as ...”

“As soon as what?”

“I have a couple of things I have to work out. There is...someone...I need distance from. But eventually, I’ll go back. I know it.”

He watched her face as she was speaking, and her enthusiasm was irresistible. He grabbed her and slid her underneath him while she laughed.

“You should visit sometime. I think you’d like it there!” she said.

“I like it right here, right now.”

***

The summit of the Mount Hood pass was half in shadow and half in light. Terrill pulled out onto the highway and drove down into the light.

Half the trees he passed were orange, seemingly dead. Pine beetle damage, Terrill thought, thinking he’d read something about it in The Oregonian. The dryness didn’t make him any more comfortable. The mountain lakes were bright blue and the roads to them paved with red cinders. He kept to the main highway and drove through the quaint tourist town of Sisters and on into Bend.

He’d become practiced at finding local motels where he could pass unnoticed. Not too fancy, not too seedy; not too new or too old; bland and slightly downhill of their peak: That’s what Terrill preferred. Bend had several that fit the bill.

It was still hours until dark. This late in the winter, he’d be able to venture out after about four p.m. as long as he wore his hat and gloves and a long scarf wrapped around his face. But he had a couple of hours to kill until then, so he drove around, exploring the town. It didn’t take him more than hour to drive all the main roads.

Finally, he judged it dark enough to pull up to the office of one of the motels, park under the overhang there and hop out. He rented a room with a queen-size bed, microwave and refrigerator, and paid for a week.

Terrill checked into his room and then consulted the Yellow Pages for the nearest independent butcher. He got back in the car and drove to the butcher’s, where he ordered several pounds of steak, and then drove back to the motel. He ate the meat raw, licking the butcher paper clean of blood.

The blandness of the blood brought back the memory of his feeding on Jamie. He hadn’t wanted that. Especially not after trying for decades not to kill another human. Especially not her. He had really liked her, perhaps more than any other mortal woman in his long existence.

Terrill felt defeated, sick, and the raw meat did little to make him feel satiated. He wouldn’t feel satiated ever again, not if he could help it. He would starve first.

Or so he told himself.

But the memory of waking up, staring into an empty mirror, and feeling the old bloodlust again was overpowering. Even as he’d sunk his teeth into her neck, he’d been aware of the wrongness of it. Even as he’d drained her, he had known he was killing her.

But he couldn’t stop.

Never again would he trust himself to seek comfort in another human being. Another human being? No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t human.

He was a monster. He had always been a monster. He would always be a monster.