Death of an Immortal

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

In London, England, Horsham awoke at the exact moment the sun went down. There was a soft sound in the other room, and his fangs immediately extended, his face elongated, and his claws dug into the mattress. He leapt off the bed and was at the door in moments. Then he stopped and took a breath. No! he thought. Rule 3: Never feed where you live. Take hold of yourself!

He was gripping the doorknob so hard that it had crumpled in his hand. Saliva dripped from his jaws to the floor, but he retracted his fangs. He rolled his shoulders, trying to relax them, and looked down at his claws and turned them back into human hands.

The servant girl in the next room turned when the door opened. Her fabled master, whom she had never seen in person before, came in wearing a thick bathrobe, his dark hair tousled and an even darker look on his face.

“You are never to be here when I awake,” he growled. “Get out!”

She paled, as if realizing the danger she was in. “I’m sorry. The paperboy was late today, so …”

“Get out!”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” She fled from the room, closing the door behind her.

Normally, the coffee and morning newspaper were waiting in the kitchen when Horsham woke up at dusk. The servants and guards who protected him throughout the day were gone—for their own protection. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself when he first woke up. At that vulnerable moment, his hunger was always at its strongest and most instinctual.

He sat and drank the coffee in three gulps, glanced at the paper and threw it aside.

Horsham walked to his desk and turned on his laptop. The Internet was the wonder of the ages. He should know: Although he was a little fuzzy about computers, he certainly knew about the ages.

For generations, Horsham had hired cadres of young women to scan the world’s newspapers for specific types of stories. He’d spent hours every week reading the stories that had met his parameters. As the decades went by without Terrill being found, those parameters had widened. Sometimes it had seemed like reading the news was all he did.

Now? All he had to do was turn on his computer. Through the magic of algorithms, he got a complete and accurate readout of the world’s news, from which he gleaned only the most pertinent stories. But even now, he had to read for a steady half hour every morning because of all the bullshit people printed. Garbage in, garbage out, he thought.

He was eight minutes into his daily routine when an item caught his eye.

Portland, Oregon. A young woman had been found murdered in a motel, drained of blood, with two puncture wounds to the neck. A broken mirror had been found near the body, and police theorized that one of the fragments had been used to kill her. They didn’t try to explain the missing blood.

There was a vampire story nearly every day, somewhere in the world. But in almost every case at least one of the details was wrong. This, on the other hand, was a basic news item, with no inaccuracies about vampires, and that made it interesting to Horsham. Even the fact that the victim hadn’t been consumed didn’t rule out Terrill. He wasn’t acting like a normal vampire anymore; killing this girl had probably been unintentional.

Portland was a place a vampire might gravitate to, just as Horsham migrated to different parts of the world depending on the rainy seasons.

He deleted the rest of the stories but left this one up, with a note to investigate further.

Then he got dressed and went out to feed.

***

Europe was by far the best hunting grounds for a vampire: There were multiple countries—meaning multiple jurisdictions—within a few hours of each other. In the U.S.A., with its Homeland Security measures, it was getting difficult to find prey without attracting notice.

Horsham employed a random location generator, and today the program had spit out Inverness, the de facto capital of the Scottish Highlands. It was about a 560-mile trip from London. He hesitated. He could overrule the random generator, but he preferred not to. He also preferred not to leave of record of where he traveled, or else he would have taken his private jet.

He only needed to feed once a month, so a two-day trip to the Scottish Highlands wasn’t out of line. He needed a vacation. He certainly could afford it. Compound interest was a vampire’s best friend.

He packed his overnight bag and took a cab down to the train station.

Horsham paid in cash for a private room in a luxury sleeping car on the express train from London to Inverness. He stayed out of the public gathering spots on the train for the first couple of hundred miles, ordering his meals delivered to his room: raw steak, as raw as the law would allow them to serve. His hunger for blood was growing with every second, and now that it was about to be satiated, the urgency seemed to grow exponentially.

He’d held off for months this time, trying to instill discipline in himself. But he didn’t want to wait too long—he had a theory that the longer he waited, the weaker he became. Being discovered—and having to move, to reinvent himself yet again—was less of a danger than being weak. Weak got you killed.

That’s why he’d been certain that he could track Terrill down. Terrill couldn’t afford to be weak. At first, Horsham thought it would be a matter of days…then weeks, months, years, decades. Occasionally, his old enemy would slip up, but by the time Horsham would arrive on the scene, Terrill would have moved on.

And then, for the last two decades, nothing. No news. Other, lesser vampires were at work in the world, but Horsham could sense that they weren’t Terrill. Sloppy and self-indulgent, these vampires were often caught and destroyed.

Terrill and Horsham were the last of the old breed.

Eventually, it would be only Horsham.

***

As night fell, he made his way to the dining car.

They all looked up when he entered the car—of course they did. He was a striking figure: six feet, four inches tall, with solid black hair, dark eyes, and a silvered goatee (he’d added the silver), dressed formally, almost archaically, in a suit complete with a vest and boutonniere—a rich man’s affectations.

Most everyone else was in shorts and T-shirts, even the well-off among them. Horsham looked around for young and unattached people—men or women, it didn’t matter to him as long as their blood was healthy. It was mere force of habit; he had no intention of feeding where he had been seen.

There was a gay couple in the car, and both men eyed him. There were three tables of older couples, and one young family. There was a single female, better dressed than the other women and far better looking than the matronly American tourists. A working girl, he guessed from long experience. She gave off that flavor.

Horsham sat down, ignoring his fellow passengers, waving away the menu offered by a server and ordering another raw steak, this time with a baked potato and green beans, which he wouldn’t eat but would push around the plate like a six-year-old child. The proximity of so much human blood was almost too much, but he didn’t show his growing hunger.

He ate the steak slowly, though he wanted to eat it in one bite, grab the nearest diner and feast on him or her and then the rest of them. Short work. No witnesses. He could leap off the train at speeds that would kill a human. It would be a mystery, just another mass murder in the headlines.

A shadow fell over him, and he wasn’t surprised when he looked up to see the single female. She was new at the game; disease or drugs hadn’t yet ravaged her blood. She smelled like the finest meal possible.

He didn’t smile at her, but simply raised one eyebrow.

“May I join you?” she said, and her voice was low and seductive. She’d spent hours cultivating that voice, practicing in front of a mirror, he surmised.

Why not? He could smell her, if not taste her. She was beautiful as well, red-haired and heavily freckled, with deep green eyes, wearing a formal blue dress. I could eat her up, he thought, amused. No, really: I could eat her up.

He smiled to himself, and she took it as an invitation and swooshed into the seat opposite him.

He took his empty water glass, filled it from the wine carafe and handed it to her.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she purred.

They talked about nothing of consequence: the weather, the i***t Americans—raising their voices slightly so that they could be overheard. It was fun, but Horsham’s bloodlust was rising along with his horniness.

He knew himself. He wouldn’t be able to satisfy one need without satisfying the other. There were just too many witnesses.

He paid for the meal and peeled off another hundred and laid it in front of her. “Thanks for the company.”

“The night is young,” she said suggestively.

Horsham was already shaking his head. “I have an early day tomorrow. Again, thanks for the company. Have a good night.”

As he got up, her hand landed on his arm. “For what you just paid me, I could...”

He snarled at her. Like a dog—no, like a wolf. He couldn’t help himself. He turned away at the last second as his fangs extended, so at least no one saw that. But everyone heard the snarl. Everyone’s hair had probably stood on end at the primal sound.

He walked away without looking back.

He didn’t sleep that night, expecting them to storm his cabin and put an end to him.

***

The next day, when the train arrived in the Highlands, Horsham was exhausted, hungry and angry. He rented a car, headed away from Inverness and into the bright green slopes and valleys, and fell upon the first couple he saw: Americans, on bikes, wearing their ridiculous spandex. He took great satisfaction in devouring them, leaving only their broken bones.

After he had fed, Horsham felt newly alive, and strength surged through him. He expended some of this new energy by piling so many rocks on the bones that it would take an ambitious and curious person to dig down under them. These days, hardly anyone fit that description.

He drove the rented car back to London.

Last night had been too close. He’d almost given himself away.

Next time, he wouldn’t wait so long to feed. It had been an experiment: If Terrill could resist for decades, Horsham had thought, surely I can resist for a few months.

Let Terrill be a fool. No doubt his decision had to do with his qualms about killing people. But it didn’t show greater discipline: It showed weakness.

Horsham would feed when he wanted. A vampire was meant to prey on the weak. It was his nature.