Chapter Twelve

He awoke slowly, in stages: his numbed senses were cognizant of little more than a dull buzzing in his ears. But it became steadily louder and more distinct. Marching music . . . laughter . . . The television set.

Gomer Pyle came to Stiles’s ears, and at the same moment: Pain.

It was a dark and angry being, this pain, and it waited for him to surface with unerring patience so it could caress him again and flay his senses raw. It centered mostly in his crotch and throbbed in rhythm with his heartbeat, but just out of sync with the diesel rigs that roared between his ears. The nausea was thick as well, clogging his nose and throat, making it hard to breathe. But he fought it. He fought hard and he pushed it back into a corner and held it there. Only then could he feel his way outward and take stock of himself and his situation.

Without opening his eyes, he knew there was blood on his face. Spots were still warm and sticky, especially around the gash in his brow, but the rest was drying and cracked with the slightest twitch of a facial muscle. There were bruises too, all over him—he didn’t have to move to know they were there. But at least nothing felt broken. His left eye was nearly swollen shut and his jaw felt rubbery, though he couldn’t remember being struck in either place. He couldn’t remember much of anything, in fact. Not yet, anyway.

He knew he was on the bed—the detergent scent of the sheet and pillows was a sharp contrast to the gastric odor still lingering in his nostrils. He was flat on his back, spread-eagle, and could not change his position. Taut nylon (your own rope, goddammit!) cut into his wrists and ankles with the slightest movement.

The room was silent except for the TV. He opened one eye just enough to look around.

He couldn’t make out much at first; the only light was that of the television, and its snowy picture rearranged the shadows with each flicker and roll, making the room seem alive with phantoms. What he could see was a shambles. The bureau was tipped against the wall, its drawers askew and spilling clothes onto the floor. One of the Walnut Suite’s two lounge chairs seeped fiber entrails from a mortal wound in its upholstery. Even the bed he was on had suffered a broken leg, so it lurched to the left like a sinking raft. The walls were a mess; at least the extensive cracks and dents and streaks of blood explained his further injuries. He’d been bounced off those walls more than once.

The memory of it was suddenly upon him then—the pain swelled in response, and so did his panic. His eye scanned the room frantically, searching, for not only was his raft sinking but there was a shark still out there in the darkness, waiting . . . Easy. Slow and methodical or you’ll give yourself away. Now think, dammit. There has to be a way out of this.

“Sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise!” Gomer exclaimed, and the canned laughter rose appreciatively. It and one other. The accompanying chuckle was deep and distinct and only a few feet away.

A sudden chill raced along Stiles’s spine.

The second lounge chair was turned away from him toward the television, so he hadn’t noticed the dark figure still sitting there. The vampire was not looking at Stiles; his eyes were on the television, glued there with a sort of bemused awe. And as he watched, he rolled his head from side to side, turning it slowly, aligning the reformed vertebrae and audibly grinding the cartilage until the fit was secure. His movements were still jerky, made worse by the damage Stiles had inflicted, so it appeared all the more unnatural when that once-broken neck craned around to glare at him. The face was shadowed, backlit by the television, but Stiles could feel those empty black eyes on him, never blinking, boring into him. It was all he could do to fight back a shiver and continue to feign unconsciousness. Danner watched a little longer, then cocked a thumb at the TV. “This is really something,” he said in a distinctly Hoosier drawl, though there was nothing at all folksy in his tone. “How does it work?”

Stiles stayed silent.

With a sigh of exasperation the vampire stood and stretched his young, lanky frame. Then he stepped over to the bed and jabbed a vicious finger into Stiles’s crotch. The prostrate man clenched his teeth to conceal a whimper and tried curling into a ball, but the ropes refused him. Danner just laughed. “I thought that would get your attention. Now, how does the TV box work?”

The soldier strained against his bonds. “Go fuck yourself,” he hissed.

“Still defiant,” observed the younger-looking man with a mechanical nod. “Good for you.” He turned back to the television now that Gomer and his sergeant had segued into an armed forces recruitment ad. The Blue Angels arched across the sky in formation, leaving puffy jet trails in their wake and Danner mesmerized by their mere existence. “Amazing. So many things have changed.” He patted the top of the TV. “This could get to be a habit. I hope it doesn’t interfere with my hunting time.” He leaned closer. “Or I could just ‘order out’, eh?” He sang the “Domino’s Pizza Delivers” jingle and chuckled to himself. Stiles was silent—hearing the song in that dead man’s voice made his skin crawl. “Come now. Where’s your sense of humor? Oh,” he snapped his fingers, “that reminds me. I’ve been saving something just for you.” He shed the ragged remnants of his coat and vest and pulled off his shirt to bare the pale flesh of his chest. There, just to the right of his sternum, was a dent the shape of Stiles’s foot, nearly a quarter-inch deep. “You kick like a mule, friend,” Danner said, “but it doesn’t mean much.” He closed his eyes and pursed his lips, concentrated, and the dimpled flesh suddenly popped back into place like a child’s plastic ball. The vampire grinned boastfully as he stole a sweatshirt from among Stiles’s things. But then he saw the soldier shrug with indifference. “Oh? You’ve seen such a thing before?”

Stiles continued to hide his shock. He just shrugged again.

The vampire gritted his pointed teeth. “I’m afraid the years have thinned my patience,” he said as he rose from the chair. He reached out and weaved the ring finger of Stiles’s right hand between his own and, with no more warning, snapped it like a pencil. Stiles went rigid but would not allow himself to cry out. The tears rolled down his bloodstained cheeks. “Oh, go ahead,” the creature urged him. “Cry out. Yell your hardest. No one will hear you.”

Stiles gasped for breath, fought to focus his senses again and will the pain away with the rest. “Ass . . . hole. The deputy’ll be back . . . to check. Probably bring the marshal.”

Danner smiled as he perched himself on the edge of the bed. “I’m inclined to doubt that,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He took out a small metal oval that gleamed in the flickering TV light. “You see, I met your Mr. Larson last night.” He leaned over and pinned the town marshal’s badge on the pillow next to Stiles’s head. “And I wouldn’t count on the deputy either. The marshal should be stopping by there any time now. For a midnight snack?” Smirking, he went to the Walnut Suite’s big picture window and pulled open the drapes. Against the TV’s glow, the window was a canvas of flat black, and the vampire drank it in like the most glorious sunrise. “I met many people last night,” he told the soldier. “Yes, indeed. And you—you amused me. Sitting there in that great box of an automobile, watching those turds I stuffed under the road. I could’ve taken you then, my friend. I could’ve had you any time.”

Chris smiled through his pain. “You should’ve tried.”

“Why?” He motioned out the window. “I had other business out there. With them. An entire town to slake my thirst and, by damn, I was thirsty. Seventy-five odd years will do that to you. So I drank, my friend, long and deep and I haven’t stopped yet. There is so much more prey these days; everywhere you turn. Men, women . . . children.” He chuckled low in his throat. “I so enjoy the young ones. They’re so . . . so soft, so . . .”

“You sick motherfucker.”

The vampire looked back at him and this time his young, stark features were drawn tight. He came back to the bed in two long strides and glared down at his prisoner. “You’d judge me?” He grasped the pinkie finger of the man’s already injured hand and started to bend it backwards, as slow as he could. Unrelenting. Stiles struggled and bucked and buried his face in his shoulder to muffle the cries he couldn’t hold back. But it was still several seconds before the bone finally gave. He collapsed and sank back into the mattress, gagging on his bile, spitting blood from where he’d bitten through his bottom lip. Danner’s pallid face was hovering just above him; its breath was fetid. “You have a big mouth, friend. I suggest you shut it while you still have some . . . fingers left. . . .”

Danner’s expression changed in midsentence. His eyes widened, and the pupils, like dark empty holes, suddenly flashed with rims of silver. His breathing increased, panting, and his lips quivered with expectation. His nostrils flared at the scent of . . . oh, Christ. Stiles suddenly realized. Blood. The vampire leaned closer and muttered something soft and excited under his breath, and a pale, raspy tongue licked out at the cut in the prisoner’s lip. Stiles spat at him in disgust and pushed himself deeper into the mattress but the thing followed, tracing a path along his cheek to the gash above his eye. Danner started to purr in his throat as he sucked at the wound, and his breathing grew faster and the purr became a growl and he grabbed the soldier’s hair and wrenched his head to one side. “NO!” Stiles yelled in disbelief, his tone becoming frantic when he felt the clammy lips fasten to his throat.

But suddenly Danner threw himself back from the bed. He stood there, tensed and glaring, struggling for control, and in that instant, in the flickering cast of the TV, he looked starkly different. He was no longer the fresh-faced young man from the picture in the newspaper; it was as if that image had become transparent, and Stiles could stare through it to the creature beneath. It was the same creature he’d faced two nights earlier. Its frame was rigid, its shoulders hunched, and the head jutted forward at an unnatural angle. Its eyes were wide and livid, and the long teeth bared in a feral smile. “No,” the creature hissed, more to itself than Stiles. It stalked toward the window and looked away, and slowly its composure returned. When Danner looked back, his youthful facade was reinstated. “No,” he sighed, calmer now. “Not yet. There’s time enough for that.” He stepped closer to the bed, paused to lick a smear of blood from his fingertip. “It won’t be that easy, Stiles. Not by a mile.” He went back to his chair and settled himself. Gomer Pyle had been replaced by Hogan’s Heroes, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

Stiles lay shivering and finally managed to swallow the knot in his throat so he could breath again. That image, that devil’s face still lingered before his mind’s eye, the feel of that mouth on him . . . Dammit, man. Think! There has to be a way out of this! He surged against his bonds again, hoping in desperation that this time, somehow, they would give. But a new, stinging pain brought him up short. He found his wrists torn and bleeding; during the struggle the ropes had slipped halfway over his hands, taking a layer of skin with them. Despite further burns and the pain to his broken fingers, he was sure he could pull free. But what then, he wondered. His legs were still held fast. What would he do?

He searched the room for weapons, for a gun or a knife. But his spirits sagged just as quickly. The Heckler & Koch was on the desk across the way, beside his holsters and the open butterfly knife. Even if he freed his arms, and his legs too for that matter, he’d never make it across the room. But wait a minute . . . where was the Uzi? It wasn’t on the desk. He could remember carrying it into the room, dropping it on the bed, seeing it on the floor during the fight.

Danner’s foot kicking it as he passed . . .

Stiles shifted as far as he could, careful not to attract Danner’s attention, and craned his neck to see over the right side of the bed. Nothing. He stretched back to the left, where the bed sagged from its broken leg, and he peeked over the edge. It was dark along the floor, but . . . was there something down there? He waited for the TV picture to brighten again. When it did, just enough light slipped beneath the bed for him to recognize the corner of the Uzi’s extended magazine. It was within reach. If he could just get his hands free . . .

“And now for a few words of inspiration,” said the television announcer as programming finally ended for the day. A small, balding man from an Indianapolis church stood before a stained-glass backdrop and smiled wanly. But before he could open his mouth, the vampire’s fist lashed out and shattered the picture tube in a spray of glass and sparks. Stiles was startled; he ceased his struggles just as Danner turned to look at him.

“You know,” said the creature, “you never answered my question. Have you come across anyone like me before?”

“Oh, I’ve met lots of assholes over the years. . . .” Danner started to get out of his chair. “All right, all right. I haven’t. Satisfied?”

The vampire smiled. “I knew it the moment you saw this face, the look in your eyes . . . It was almost worth the trouble. Almost.” He turned his chair toward the bed and perched on the edge. “There aren’t many like me, friend. Because I’m the real thing. A vampire. Those things you’re familiar with, the ones running the streets right now, they’re simply cadavers. The by-product of my existence; my bite passes along the thirst just as a dog may pass on rabies. It alone drives them; it is all they think about, all they dream of. Personally, I don’t condone their existence. In all honesty, they deplete the food supply from time to time and I have to destroy a few. But on average they do as they’re told, and they come in handy now and again.”

“And what makes you different?”

The vampire beamed. “I’ll tell you the secret.” He leaned closer. “It’s in the blood. There’s a ritual, a bonding and pledging and damning of oneself, all in one exquisite act. The Master partakes of the initiate’s blood, and the same in return. That is where the power comes from. The strength, the abilities. The magic.”

“A pact with the devil, then.”

Danner scoffed. “Some things are worth the price. I, for one, was never satisfied before. I needed more, always more—knowledge, excitement. More . . . life?” He smirked. “I left this backwater state as soon as I could, to travel and explore, to dabble in matters both dark and fascinating. I saw things in those days that would curl your toes, Mr. Stiles. Some were perverse even to me, like that damn voodoo nigger magic. And none of it appeased me. So I took my curiosity abroad.”

He leaned back in the chair, all but lost in recollections that stretched back three-quarters of a century. “I came upon him in Paris. He had been stalking men for centuries even then. He told me he was from Britain, just after the Roman invasion. He was tail and thin and not particularly attractive, but his presence . . . it was magnetic. I was easily obsessed with him, even before I knew who, or what, he was. I began to follow him, to his resting houses, his hunts. His kills. But I wasn’t shocked by it all. I was excited. One night he found me watching, yet he didn’t raise a hand against me. He said he saw something kindred in me, what was it . . . ah. A questing soul. So he let me stay with him. I became his familiar, then his companion. Ultimately, his lover. I entered into the rite of blood quite willingly, and I reveled in it. That night, I became more than human.”

“You became very dead,” Stiles said disdainfully.

Danner frowned. “Semantics, my friend. How should we judge life? By the warmth of the skin, by the mechanical lumbering of a fragile heart? I am superior now. I have six times your strength. I can hear better, see farther. I can remember any passage from any book and I will be around long enough to read them all. I can experience undreamed-of changes, discover new times and new worlds where there are television boxes and movies with sound and great iron vehicles that rend the skies above. I can even fly one, and shall, in time. And,” he leered, “no matter what the year, whether this century or ten centuries from now, I can hold the lives of men right in the palm of my hand. You are a hunter, Mr. Stiles. You know what it is like. That tinge of excitement, that heady thrill that the kill brings.”

“No,” Stiles said flatly, hiding his own self-doubts. “I don’t like killing.”

“Really? Come now, my friend. We are too much alike.”

“Not hardly.”

Danner wore a viper’s smile. “We shall see. For that’s the purpose of my little confession.” His expression became malevolent as he came to the bed and sat down on its edge. “You. Hurt. Me. Mister. Stiles,” he hissed, punctuating each word with a finger jabbed into the soldier’s ribs. One of them gave an audible crack, and the soldier winced. Danner continued talking. “I thought imprisonment was the most grievous wrong done me but you went one better. It took all I had to recover from your attack, to regain my strength, to heal myself. You will suffer for that. You will rue the day you raised your hand against me.”

He reached over and smeared his finger with blood from Stiles’s lip and licked it off with rapturous delight. “I could take you now. I could bleed you dry and leave you a mindless husk like those out there. But that seems so . . . simple. You wouldn’t be able to comprehend your plight, would you? No, I want you as I am: fully conscious and able, with all of your faculties and wits intact. You will need them.” He leaned over him. “For this fate can be many things—blessing to some, curse to others. Imagine an unquenchable thirst, and the vile acts you must commit to appease it. Could you bear the shame, the guilt? A moral man, a righteous man, would be tormented throughout eternity.” Then he smiled. “Or at least until he learned to enjoy it. And you will, Mr. Stiles. We are that much alike.”

Stiles strained at his ropes openly. If only I can get to the Uzi . . . “You’re screwing up, Danner,” he stalled. “Making me like you would be your biggest mistake. Then I’d have your powers, and I’d use them against you. I’d can your ass, so help me God.”

Danner laughed. “No vampire can use his powers against his master. Never.”

Stiles managed a disturbing grin. “Just wait and see.”

The vampire’s smirk vanished. “Enough talk,” he snapped. “It’s time.” He stood and stretched like a cat before its meal. “You know, traditionally, the apostle would drink from a wound in the Master’s neck or breast. But for you . . . I’ve another vessel in mind.” He unbuttoned his pants and reached inside. The thing he took in hand was pale and bulbous, like a slug born to darkness. When he ran a fingernail across his penis’s sallow head, it left a ragged scar as if in wax, and, slowly, stolen blood began to seep through the laceration. Stiles squirmed frantically, jerking and tugging at his bonds, but they wouldn’t come loose, not fast enough. Danner seized him by the face and pressed at the jaw hinge, squeezed hard until the soldier had to unclench his teeth and open wide or hear yet another bone crack. “Drink, Mr. Stiles. Drink deep.”

A voice sounded from over near the door. “Put your dick away,” it said. “Nobody wants to look at it.”

Danner wheeled with a snarl. But there was no one there.

“Alex?” Stiles muttered.

“Who is it!” barked the vampire. “Show yourself!”

“Back here, Smiley.” The voice came from the bathroom. “Catch me if you can.”

Danner buttoned his pants and stormed across the room with a low growl, battering in the lavatory door, knocking it off its hinges. But there was no one there. The voice had already moved on.

“Over here, Smiley.

“No, over here now.

“C’mon, Smiley. You’re getting cold.”

“ENOUGH!” Danner went back to the bed and caught Stiles’s windpipe in a vise-like grip. “Show yourself,” he ordered, “or he dies now!”

There was movement near the front door; an indistinct figure was suddenly standing there, hiding in the gloom, a shadow among shadows. “Whoever you are,” the vampire hissed, “you’re a dead man.”

“Lucky guess, fucknuts,” Alex replied. “Now, move away from the bed.”

“Or what?” Danner picked the lifeless television from its stand as if it weighed nothing and flung it at the intruder, smashing it into the corner and destroying both wallboard and appliance alike. But the shadow man standing there was untouched. “But . . .” the vampire stammered, “how could . . .”

“You’re a little slow on the uptake, son. I’m a ghost, get it? A spirit, a specter, a haunt?”

“That’s impossible.”

“You should talk. Now, I suggest you leave while you can.”

Danner managed to control his shock. He even laughed. “Is that a threat?”

“Gosh, it sounded like one to me.”

The vampire shoved the lounge chair across the room, where, like the TV, it passed through its target and rebounded off the wall. Then he laughed. “You have no substance, spook. How do you plan to hurt me?”

“I can’t,” the shadow man replied. “But he can.” He pointed behind the fiend. Toward the bed.

Danner’s eyes widened. He suddenly knew that the phantom was no threat—only a diversion.

He turned just as the prisoner sat upright on the bed, pulled the Uzi into view and opened fire. The short, static burst started low and swept upward, opening the vampire from crotch to collar­bone. But Danner stayed on his feet. He looked down at the widening fissure in his chest and stomach, saw his captured blood spilling onto the motel-room floor, and he shook with sudden rage. His mouth opened wide and kept going, seeming to fill with more and more jagged teeth, until he gave a guttural cry and lunged toward the bed.

Stiles ignored the pain of the Uzi’s recoil in his hands and fingers and fired again, this time sweeping from side to side. The first pass cut a dotted line along the creature’s throat but didn’t slow him; the second enlarged the perforation and made Stiles’s intentions obvious. Decapitation. “NO!” Danner croaked, mostly through the rent in his throat, as he turned and threw himself through the picture window in a rain of glass.

The Uzi had hit empty but Stiles kept it ready nonetheless, at least until the footsteps outside staggered away and faded from his ears. The vampire was gone again, but for how long? He was getting stronger, Stiles could feel it. It was just a matter of time.

He struggled with the ropes at his ankles, cursing them and his aching hands, and finally freed himself completely. But he collapsed like a stringless puppet as soon as he left the bed. He looked to the specter still lingering in the shadows. Even Alex looked haggard and spent—what Chris could see of him—and he was already fading. But he managed to smile anyway. “How’re you doing, Hoss?”

Stiles nodded. “Pretty shitty, but I’ll manage. How about you?”

Alex faded a little more. “I guess my Casper act . . . took a little more out of me than I expected.”

“But why? Why’d you come back to help? You never did that before.”

The specter tried to shrug. “I guess you never really needed me until now.” He was little more than an afterimage now. “I’m used up, Hoss. I won’t be back for a while. So it looks like you’re on your own.”

“I’m used to it,” Chris replied. “And Alex . . . thanks. You know?” But by that time the shadow man was gone. Chris couldn’t tell if his brother had heard him or not.