CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Perchance to Dream

 

The vampire felt his heart thudding dully in his chest. A red roar of sound in his ears. A feeling of tightness in his chest and neck: the pressure of blood, the fullness of an overworked circulatory system.

You’re human again, he thought.

Which meant this was a dream. A daydream.

“I’m dreaming too often,” he said to no one, his voice quiet, soft, no echo. He got louder, shouting into the void: “I don’t dream! I die during the day. I want that back. I want to shut it all out.”

Somewhere, everywhere, a girl crying.

“Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.”

Sweat beaded on his brow. It trickled into his mouth. Salty and sweet. His pits, damp. His palms, slick. Human, indeed.

“Hell with this,” he said. “I’m walking out of here. This dream has to have an end. I’ll find it. Every dream ends.”

And with that, a door appeared. A red door. Old. Paint faded. Above it, hanging in the darkness as if by fishing wire, a window. Across the panes of that window? Streaks of blood. Wet. Flies dotting the red, hungry, buzzing.

Seeing that, his heart kicked in his chest like a bucking mule. Adrenalin cut through the fog. Was this what being alive felt like? This constant pressure? The jerking up and down like on a puppet’s strings? Feeling alive felt uncertain. It was not a pleasurable memory.

Well. He’d asked for an end to the dream, and here was a door.

He opened it.

And walked into an old farmhouse. Floorboards creaking underneath dusty runner rugs. Country décor: wooden chickens on the wall, an Amish hex over a wooden stove, iron heating grates, borders with mallard ducks. It smelled of must and mold. The air felt heavy.

Kayla stepped out into the hallway.

“You’re here,” she said. Smiling. Wiping away tears.

But for this moment, Coburn didn’t care. He wanted to see past her. Something in that room. Flies buzzed over her head.

“What’s in that room?”

“You don’t want to see,” she said.

“I do want to see. Get the hell out of my way.”

Kayla stood in front of the door. “Coburn. I swear. You don’t want to see this. Not now.” Her eyes were puffy. Cheeks wet.

He bent down, got nose to nose with her, and showed his teeth. With his tongue he went to flick forth his fangs—but all that he had was a pair of regular old human canine teeth. Good for chewing steak. Not so good for perforating necks or wrists.

“I don’t need to listen to you,” he hissed. “You left me.” He tried to see over her shoulder, but she waved her hand in the way.

“It wasn’t me. It was my father.”

“Gil.” The name dripped off Coburn’s lips like so much bile.

“He thought he was doing the right thing.”

“Well, he didn’t. Because now I’m gone. And you’re… God knows where, and only God cares.”

She held up her hands as if to offer a clumsy ta-da. “We’re here, Coburn. Here in this farmhouse.”

He tried to see past her again, but somehow, couldn’t. Didn’t make any sense. Kayla wasn’t a big girl. He was a tall dude. But somehow, every time he peered past her, something moved in the way—her hair, her hand, a shadow.

“I can’t see into the goddamn room,” he seethed. “Move!”

“We’re here,” she said, ignoring his pleas. “It’s not far from the highway. Not even a mile. You can find it.”

“I don’t believe you. Just another lie. Besides, this is my dream.”

“And your dream is telling you to find us. It let me in. You let me in.”

“Go to Hell.”

“Help us. Help me.”

Coburn looked around. “You don’t need my help. Perfectly nice farmhouse. Love the chickens. Now fuck off and move.”

“We’re surrounded,” Kayla said, her voice cracking. Fresh tears ran. “Leelee got bit and I gave her some of my blood but I feel weak. And now outside they’re everywhere. I don’t know why. I don’t know where they came from. Hundreds of them. Maybe more. The house is weak. They’re going to get in eventually. Got the windows boarded up but it won’t hold. We don’t have much food. Don’t have any water. We’re dead before dawn.”

“So die already.”

Her hands trembled, like she wanted to hit him. “You’re an awful person.”

“Not a person, sweetheart,” he offered her his winning smile, but it was devoid of mirth and contained a tight thread of anger tucked between his clenched teeth. “Can’t say it enough. Not human. Not alive. Total monster. Go to Hell.”

“Please…” she said, a spit bubble blowing on her lip.

Coburn sensed opportunity. It was as if the dream shifted somehow—as if Kayla had been in control all along and had relinquished (or, rather, lost) some of that control. It came back to him, fell back to his hands, and he picked her up and moved her aside and then Coburn saw what was in that room.

His heart stopped beating. He felt it die, puckering and shriveling into the peach pit it should’ve been. The tightness at his chest loosened. The pressure at his neck, his jawline, his temples—it faded like a dying man giving up one last breath, one final exhalation where his life left in a single sigh.

This was how it felt to no longer be alive. To be alive was an awful sensation, Coburn had thought before—and, in many ways, it was. But he had forgotten how truly wretched it was to feel dead. To have nothing inside.

He blinked, turned away from the room. Couldn’t unsee that.

Kayla crumpled to the floor, crying. Coburn offered her his hand. Helped her up and said, “Hold out as long as you can. I’ll find you. Farmhouse got a driveway?”

She nodded. “But it’s full of them.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

And then he awoke.