Home

News

Appearances

Bibliography

Forum

Links

LiveJournal

Photos

Online Fiction

Store

Chapter One:

The ruined abbey hovered over the town; visible from almost any vantage point, it stood like a sentinel — cold, stony and vigilant.  My eyes were constantly drawn to its massive arches, its empty windows and the solid rows of surrounding graves.  I was never quite sure if the abbey served as a headstone for the past, a warning for the future, or an example of what we had become.

Forcing my gaze away from the ruins and from the stones gently glowing in the moonlight, I sighed.  The hour was late and hunger threatened.  We would have to hunt soon even if it meant risking recognition or capture.  I wondered and not for the first time, how we had fallen from our once exalted state into nothing much more than cornered and frightened animals.

"I do not know, Mitch.  Perhaps they are right after all.  We serve no purpose in this world."

I spoke the words quietly, leaning on the railing of the small boardwalk, staring now into the dark water that flowed past us.  If he heard, he gave no indication, made no response.  It made no difference, we'd had this same discussion many times during the past three years.

Three years.  A short time in comparison with almost the two centuries I had already lived.  And yet those past three years weighed heavily on my mind and my soul.  We had been running for too long, living in fear and anger amongst people who'd previously had no knowledge of our existence.  We had spent three years looking over our shoulders, constantly waiting for the next attack, moving and hiding, but still being drawn deeper into a rapidly changing world.

I shivered and Mitch wrapped his arm around my waist, drawing me close to him, brushing his lips against my hair.

"No, Deirdre, you promised you wouldn't start again.  Remember what I said when we settled here?"

I gave a small, sad smile for the memory and leaned forward again on the rail, pulling away from him slightly.  "It stops here."  I whispered his words to the river, understanding as I did that they meant something different to me than they did to him.  Mitch, I knew, was making a stand.  Whereas I was merely resting, too tired for the constant struggle, content to let the current wash over me and pull me under.

"Damned straight.  We're going to win this, Deirdre.  We're going to beat those bastard Others at their own game."

I nodded, took his hand and held it to my cheek.  "The swans are gone," I said, changing the subject back to something safer.  "I suppose they've gone someplace warmer for the winter.  If so, I'll miss watching them; they seemed so peaceful, gliding out on the water."

Mitch laughed.  "Hardly peaceful -- they always remind me of Vivienne."  Then he sobered.  "Dammit.  I wish I knew where she was.  Not a word from her since May.  I don't like it one bit."

"Nor do I, Mitch.  But I feel sure she is safe.  Or," I shivered again, "we would have heard about it on the news.  I am sure "Real Life Vampires" would have no compunction about reporting her death.  And the no contact rule was yours, after all, so she is merely following instructions.  As are they all."

"Following instructions?"  He laughed again, his voice warm in the night air.  "Rest assured, our Viv is merely doing what Viv wishes to do.  Chances are she and Sam are holed up somewhere passing the time very pleasurably."

"What must it be like?"  My voice wavered.  "To live a life like hers?  No guilt, no remorse, no conscience, no ghosts to haunt her?"

"Deirdre."  All of Mitch's previous humor and warmth were gone.  "We've been through this before too.  And none of it is your fault."

My fists clenched tight around the railing and I shook my head.  "No, Mitch.  All of it is my fault.  Eduard said as much; had I not killed Max he would not have been able to make his move."

"And if you hadn't killed Max, I'd be dead. Dammit, Deirdre," his voice rose over the still night air, "Eduard was a lunatic.  And so was Max.  Regardless of all that has happened, the world is a better place without either one of them."

He turned to me, grabbing my shoulders.  I could feel the tension and anger in his grip and I thought he might shake me.  Instead, he pulled me close to him and rubbed his hands up and down my arms.  "You can't bear the burden of all the deaths they caused, love, you just can't.  I won't let you.  At the very worst, you were manipulated into acting as you did."

I gave another little sad smile, knowing that I wouldn't win this argument either.  Perhaps I did not want to.  "You're right, Mitch.  I am just overreacting and internalizing the conflict."

"Sounds like you've been talking to Sam."  Mitch said, laughing again.  Before becoming Vivienne's newest lover, Sam had worked as a psychiatrist at the institution to which Mitch had been committed for expressing his belief in the existence of mythical creatures of the night.  Now Sam lived in Paris with one of us and the whole world believed in vampires.  The irony of life in general and our lives in particular never ceased to amaze me.

"No.  No Sam.  That would be against the rules, remember?  But," and I sighed, "I wish I could.  I wish none of this had ever happened and the world could return to normal."

"We're working on that, Deirdre."

"Are we?"  My voice rose in anger.  "These creatures have managed to kill so many of us, they've cut off our finances and our ties with the rest of our kind.  We have become afraid to move, afraid even to feed for fear of discovery.  And worse, they have taken away the one thing that kept us safe for all these years.  Human disbelief.  How are we to fix that?  Wiping the memory of one human is easy, but the whole world?"

Mitch knew me well enough to realize that I was not angry with him, but with the futility of our situation.  "Hush, love," he smoothed my hair, "we'll find a way.  After all, we're not dead yet --"

His body tensed and without warning, he pulled me down to the ground.  I heard a sharp crack and felt a painful tug on my left arm.

The scent of blood, my blood, blossomed in the night air along with an almost tangible scent of anger and rage.  They had found us here and it would all start again.

Looking up with a snarl, I saw a young man, seemingly no more than eighteen years old.  Dressed totally in black, he perched on the railing, an empty crossbow gripped in one hand.  He peered down at us, eyes narrowed with his smug smile.

"Bastard."  Almost from out of thin air, I heard Mitch's voice and knew that he was even now changing form to meet the threat.

The man ignored him, and jumping down onto the walk, he reached into a pack slung over his shoulder to fit another sharpened stake onto the bow, aiming once again for me.

Forgetting the pain and the blood, I gave a sharp, inhuman hiss and dissolved my body into a mist, rolling across the concrete toward him.  His smile quickly turned to a gasp of amazement then to a grimace of fear as I slowly and torturously curled up his body and hovered around his ear.

"You cannot kill what you cannot touch."  My voice was a whisper, tenuous to match my form, as quiet as the sea and as insistent.  He made no sound, but he flinched and I knew that he heard.  Wrapping myself around his neck, I felt the scar that made him what he was.  I tightened my hold and hissed again, rewarded by the small shiver of fear and doubt that overwhelmed him.

"Other," I said, half-phasing into my human form.  "But," and my voice grew softer, "he is so young."  Despite his current attempt on my life, our lives, I pitied him.  "Why do they send them out, so young? So totally unprepared?"

Another clump of mist formed into a familiar figure behind the boy, knocking the crossbow from his hands.  The weapon  tumbled over the wall and fell with a splash into the river.  Unarmed now, the Other was less of a threat and I fully resumed my human form.  Mitch did the same, grasping our assailant's arms and twisting them behind his back.

"What shall we do with him, my love?  Wipe his mind and let him go?"

Mitch looked over at me and shook his head, eyes hard and merciless.  "That won't work.  We can't let him go, Deirdre, or he'll be back, followed by a small army.  He may be the first to find us here, but he'll definitely not be the last.  And if we take pity and let him go, well, you do remember what happened in London?"

I sighed.  "Yes, I remember.  But he is only a boy, Mitch."

"Not a boy," the gravelly words slid over gritted teeth, sounding like the hesitant, first learned words of a beast.  "I am older than either of you, and stronger than you think.  And I will see you dead and rotting before I die."

With the exception of Eduard, we had never heard one of them speak before.  Always they came at us, silent and sullen; always before they had fought and died without a sound.  In that split second of surprise, Mitch must have loosened his hold.  The man wrestled an arm away and reached into his pack, pulling out a small revolver.

I had begun to shift form, but seeing his weapon of choice, I stayed upright and solid, knowing that he could not hurt me with this.  "A gun?  What do you hope to do with that?"  I gave a mocking laugh.  "Don't they teach you any better than that where you come from, Other?  You should not come hunting vampires with guns.  In fact you should not come hunting vampires at all.  What have any of you gotten out of this war but death?"

He smiled at me and I noticed with shock than that all of his teeth had been ground down to sharp little points.  "You talk bravely for one about to die, my dear," he said.  Then he aimed the gun at my heart and laughed.  "Wooden bullets."

I ducked away to one side, throwing myself down to the ground again.  Biting my lip, I waited for the pain and for the burn of wood into my flesh.  I listened for the click of the trigger.  Instead of the firing of the gun, however, I heard a struggle and feet scuffling on the pavement.  Then, with an agonized groan and sickening crack, the laughter stopped.

Mitch pulled his hands away from the boy's neck and the Other fell, eyes lifeless and teeth permanently clenched in his jack-o-lantern grin.

"Are you okay, love?"  Mitch extended a hand and pulled me up from the pavement.

"Fine," I said, dusting off my jeans and adjusting my sweater.  "Thank you."

"I wish to hell he hadn't made that last try," Mitch said, kneeling next to the body and going through pockets and pack.  "We might have found out more from him."  He held up the wallet he found and rifled through it.  "As always, no identification, no charge cards, nothing to say who he was and where he came from.  Nice amount of cash, though, and that certainly never hurts."  He slipped the wallet into the pack and handed it all to me.  "We'll keep those this time, maybe we'll be able to find out something from the labels."

Mitch picked up the body, looking down at the anonymous face.  "Funny that this one talked, don't you think?  Do you suppose the other ones could speak and were simply choosing not to?"

I shrugged, ignoring the pain in my arm.  "Who can tell?  It all seems so pointless, so futile.  They keep trying to kill us and we don't even know why."

Mitch gave a grim laugh.  "Well, here's one who won't be trying again.  Nor will he be reporting back.  And just think of all the time he's saved us tonight — no need to go looking for prey when they come looking for you."  He glanced over the railing.  "Perfect timing, the tide's starting to go out.  There's no one else around now and we've still got a little time to feed; he'll stay warm for a while."  Then he smiled at me.  "Ladies first."

I bent my head to the Other's neck, avoiding the heavy scar tissue and placing my fangs in the soft, unresisting flesh just a few inches below his ear.  He was still warm, as Mitch predicted, and I drew on him hungrily, taking his blood in large greedy swallows, enjoying the warmth of it flow down my throat, eagerly anticipating the renewed strength and life it would give.

Then my eyes, almost of their own volition, opened wide and I pulled my mouth away abruptly, spitting out what little blood remained in my mouth.  Choking and gagging, my body doubled over and I fell to the pavement, vomiting out the blood I had just drunk.

"Poison," I managed to gasp, in between gulps of air, "do not drink from him.  He is poisoned."

"Son of a bitch."  Mitch dropped the body and leaned over me, laying a hand on my shoulder.  "Deirdre?"

I halfheartedly waved him away.  "Get rid of him, just dump him, he's no good to us now."  I swallowed and wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my sweater.  "I will be fine in a minute," I said, "but the sun will be up soon and we must get inside."

As I struggled to my feet again, he picked up the body and hefted it into the air, tossing it over the railing and into the swiftly flowing water.  We both watched it drop and sink.  

"It seems such a waste," he said, "all that blood and not one drop safe for us to drink.  Nothing we can do about that, I suppose."

"What will happen to the body, Mitch?"

"It should stay under long enough for the tide to carry him fairly far away.  If our luck holds, he'll surface out in the middle of the North Sea, in a week or two, completely unrecognizable."  Mitch wiped his hands on the sides of his jeans.  "Provided, of course, that Other flesh isn't poisonous for fish.  Let's go home."