Chapter 316 - Utah, One Week Ago part 1

"Did you bury him?" Miranda asked when Sydney returned from the wastes.

The woman was just under five feet tall and stunningly beautiful, with long wavy hair that gleamed like burnished copper and pale unblemished skin. Dressed in cut-off denim shorts and a short-sleeved blouse, she sat beside a leaping campfire, knees drawn up so that she could encircle her legs with her arms. Despite the fire, she was trembling, and faint puffs of vapor came from her lips when she spoke. She was not a vampire like her companion. Not yet. But she kept asking him for the Blood, and every time she did Sydney felt his resolve weaken just a little more.

"It's cold," Sydney said, ignoring her question. "You should take a blanket from the bag and bundle up."

"I'm good," Miranda said, and smiled up at him with blue tinged lips. "I like the cold. It's invigorating."

When people imagined deserts they thought only of the heat, Sydney mused, but deserts were actually places of great extremes—sizzling hot in the day, freezing cold at night, arid for weeks, even months at a time, then torrential downpours and sudden, deadly flash floods.

Sydney paused at the edge of the firelight. The taste of the biker's blood still lingered on his tongue, sending little tingles of pleasure shivering up and down his body. He could feel his victim's blood coursing through his veins, warming his icy flesh, rejuvenating him. His heart quivered in his chest, almost but not quite beating. His genitals were hot and gravid. He regarded the woman for a moment. Pale as she was, he did not think the Strix would change her appearance overly much. She looked like a porcelain doll now and she would still look like a porcelain doll after he had given her the Blood. An immortal porcelain doll.

If she survived the transformation.

That was really the only thing that had stayed his hand thus far. She was such a fragile human being, so tiny and delicate, and the change was so violent and unpredictable. He feared she could not endure it, that the Living Blood would simply devour her, consume her from the inside out. He had seen it once, many years ago. It was the most horrifying thing he had ever witnessed.

He had never told her this. When she asked him for the Blood, which was often (she was rather single-minded about it), he only said that he wanted to make certain she was sure of her desire for it. "Once it is done it cannot be undone," he had told her. "The living fear death, but for the immortal there is one thing even more terrifying than death, and that is eternity."

"But you can die," she had replied. "You told me so. You said the word 'immortal' was a misnomer. That your people are just really hard to kill. "

"Most of us, yes," he had answered. "But there are some, a very few of us, who cannot die at all. We call them Eternals. I have met a couple of them. They pine for death, Miranda, like a tired man pines for sleep."

He didn't think she believed him, but then how could she? She was still just a mortal woman.

Miranda had been his companion for several months now. From the moment the two met in that seedy little bar in West Texas, they had rarely been apart. An hour here and there. Never more than a day. They slept together, rode together. They spent their days and nights together. The only time he left her side was when he hunted, and only then for her own safety, as the men he fed upon were vicious and depraved, outlaws or violently insane. And after he had given her the Blood, if she survived the agonizing transformation, they could hunt together as well. It would be fun. He thought, perhaps, it might even be erotic, though the idea of taking pleasure from such a terrible act shamed and horrified him in equal measures. Sydney had been reared in the Christian tradition and did not think he would ever be totally free of the values his mother had instilled in him, but that was a good thing, he believed. It was something he took pride in.

Tonight was the first night he'd ever let her watch him feed.

"You should see it at least once," he had said," before you decide to take the Blood. You need to understand what we must do to survive."

"I do understand," she said, looking faintly annoyed. She did not like to be coddled.

"You know intellectually," he had said, pointing at his temple. "But you need to know it here." Pointing to his heart.

He knew little of the victim he had taken tonight. He knew his name was Sal, and that his friends had called him the Lizard. He was a big man, a biker, with coarse gray hair and beard and an ape-like build: muscular shoulders and arms, narrow hips and disproportionately skinny legs. He wore ripped and faded denim jeans, a stained white tee with the sleeves torn off and a wallet on a chain. There were teardrops tattooed to his cheeks and crude prison tats inscribed on his arms and chest. Sydney had encountered him at a little dive called the Cherry Pit. "Pit" was accurate enough, but there was nothing "cherry" about the joint.

Sydney had let it be known that he and Miranda were going to be in town for a while and that he was looking for employment. Just before the Pit closed for the night, the Lizard had approached him with a proposition. He was planning to do a burglary the following evening and needed a partner to help with the heist. Sydney suspected the ape-like ex-con was more interested in Miranda than he was Sydney's help, but he had played along. He was very good at acting the dupe.

By the end of their conversation, Sal had confessed to two murders, both of which he had perpetrated during the course of his criminal career, and neither of which he had ever been charged with. The time he'd served in prison, he said, had been for other less serious offenses.

Sydney was surprised the man had confessed his crimes so quickly to the two of them. Perhaps the big biker was trying to impress his girlfriend. Miranda had cleverly baited the man with flattery, even rode on Sal's hog tonight when they left the Pit to do the job. Most likely he was just drunk or stupid. Probably a little of both.

Sydney had agreed to meet the man at the Cherry Pit the following evening.

The next night, they met in the parking lot as they'd arranged, had a couple drinks, then left shortly after midnight, headed toward a storage facility the next town over to steal a stash of illegal firearms.

They never made it.

Halfway to the U-Store-It where the weapons had been secreted, as they were crossing a broad swathe of uninhabited badlands, Sydney had signaled them over. "Gotta piss, man," he had said, after they stopped on the gravel shoulder of the highway.

"Me, too," Sal said, leering at Miranda.

As Miranda watched from the bitch seat, smiling coquettishly at the big man, Sal had shouldered up beside Sydney at the verge of the desert, working the zipper of his pants.

"Let's see who's got the biggest shooter, kid," Sal had said, nudging the boy in the ribs.

Sydney had turned toward him as if to reply, grinning sheepishly… and struck the man hard with the back of his fist.

Sal went reeling to the macadam, which was still warm from the heat of the day. "What the fuck, man!" he exclaimed, head hanging between his shoulders. He had managed to rise up on his hands and knees but was too dizzy to get up. Blood drizzled from his nose onto the blacktop. Without saying a word, Sydney kicked him in the side, flipping the big man onto his back. Sal stared up at the sky, gulping like a fish out of water. His eyes were open but he wasn't quite conscious. Good. It would be easier for him that way.

"Don't look away," Sydney said, and then he had dropped onto the man's chest, pinning his arms beneath his knees.

She didn't.

Sydney struck the Lizard twice more, putting his lights out completely, then exposed his fangs and fed from the man's carotid artery. Though Sydney did not normally take pleasure in the act of feeding, other than the purely physical sensations of the deed, doing it in front of Miranda, biting and sucking the Lizard's blood, devouring the man's life while she observed, made the act especially sensual for him, as if she were watching him fuck his victim rather than feed on him.

He feared she would be horrified when she finally saw him kill but the murder didn't seem to bother her. He found that mildly worrisome, and chewed over this new concern as he carried his victim's body out into the wilderness and buried it in the friable soil of a nearby arroyo.

Few mortals could cope with immortality. Most destroyed themselves shortly after receiving the Living Blood. They could not bear the alienness of their new reality, or the need to kill their fellow man. Some, like Sydney, and like the blood drinker who had made him, survived by adhering to a strict code of honor: kill only the evildoer, protect the innocent, preserve the secrecy of their race. A few took to the life of the nosferatu too well. They became monsters, those other few… the ones who liked to kill.

Would she be one of those, he wondered. Would the Blood make a monster of his darling Miranda?

He watched her watching him, probing her with his enhanced vampire senses. He could smell her excitement. The adrenaline. Fear, curiosity, sexual arousal.

He strode into the light. "You should change into something warmer," he insisted. "You're going to get sick."

"Are we staying here tonight?" Miranda asked.

"I'd like to."

"So let's cuddle," she said.

"Won't do you any good. I'll only be warm for a few more minutes."

His skin was warm now, but the flush was quickly fading as the Strix absorbed the blood he had just ingested. He could already feel the desert air leeching the warmth from his flesh. Soon he would be as cold and white as bone, as he had been for the past one hundred and thirty years.

"I'll build up the fire," Sydney said.

Normally they rented a motel room when Sydney needed to feed. She stayed there while he went out to hunt. She would shower, watch TV, order in some food while he prowled the darkened world outside, stalking his prey, killing, feeding. But there were no motels within driving distance tonight. Tonight, she would just have to endure the cold.

All this, he had arranged purposefully.

Though he'd never do her any harm, he needed to know how she tolerated discomfort. He needed to know how she dealt with pain. Three things defined a vampire's existence: time, pain and the ecstasy of the kill. If a man or woman lacked the mental fortitude to endure all three of these things, then that man or woman was doomed the moment the Living Blood passed their lips. They would probably not live even a single mortal lifespan. If Sydney gave her the Blood and Miranda could not endure the endless, maddening hunger, he would be condemning her to a brief and miserable existence. She would hate him, she would go insane and then she would die, probably by her own hand.

As Sydney circled the fire towards her, Miranda dragged one of the saddlebags into her lap. She unbuckled it and began to sort through its contents. "It's awful cold to be sleeping out in the open tonight," she said, pulling a long sleeve shirt from the rucksack. She waited for him to speak and when he didn't she went on. "Usually we get a room. Any particular reason we're camping out tonight?"

Sydney threw a log onto the fire and sat beside her. He poked at the coals with a stick, sending up a funnel of brightly glowing sparks. His eyes sucked in the light of the flames, encapsulating it so that his pupils winked like the shimmering sparks he'd just sent swirling up into the heavens. It lent him a demonic mien, one that would have sent most mortals scrambling away in horror, but not Miranda. Miranda thought his eyes were beautiful, like jewels. It was the first thing she noticed about him, though they were not glowing quite so fiercely the night they met in that bar in West Texas. The Longhorn Lounge, it was called. The first time she saw him, she thought his eyes were like sapphires, and such a vivid shade of blue that she was certain he must be wearing vanity contact lenses.

The second thing she noticed was how young he looked. Though he had a wise and world-weary air, he had the face and form of a sixteen-year-old boy. A big farm boy. Stocky, broad chested. Arms and legs thick with muscle. Scruff of blond hair on his chin and upper lip. Twin wings of flaxen hair folded over his brow. Features that were too young to look so hard, or maybe it was the other way around.

He had watched her from the other side of the bar for nearly an hour before he made his move. She pretended not to notice him watching her, and had just about given up on him when he finally rose from his table and crossed the Lounge to introduce himself.

She had let him play his hand, listening to his pickup line with a gently sardonic smile, thinking he was just another horny cowpoke looking to hook up on a Friday night. When he'd said his piece, corny but charming, she had very reluctantly told him that she was uninterested. Flattered, sure, but uninterested. "I'm nearly old enough to be your mother," she had said.

Sydney had leaned one elbow on the bar, legs crossed at the ankles, and said, "I think you'd be surprised just how old I really am, darlin'."

That night, after they made love, he told her he was a vampire.

"It's too late to find a room for the night," Sydney said, and then he looked up past the whirling sparks. He looked out across the desert, at the tabletop mesas that guarded the desolate landscape. "Guess you'll just have to rough it tonight. Sorry."

"That's fine," Miranda said, pulling a sweater on over her blouse. "It's beautiful out here. I've seen places like this on TV but never with my own eyes." She pulled her hair from the collar of her sweater and shook it out across her shoulders.

"You should see it with mine," Sydney said.

"What do you see?" she asked, a pair of jeans in her hands.

"See those mesas over there? The ones standing on the horizon? I can make out each individual band of color running horizontally across them, even in the dark. Red. Pink. Brown. Tan. I can see every whorl the wind has carved in them over the ages. The moonlight is glinting on the sand. The whole desert sparkles, like sunlight flashing on snow. I can see frost forming on those boulders over there, tiny patterns of ice like lacy white flower petals, spreading across the sandstone. These badlands might look lifeless to you, but it is a riot of living creatures. They scurry through the darkness all around us. Beetles. Scorpions. Ants. Spiders. I can hear them, their tiny little legs scratching in the sand. This desert is vital, alive, in a way that I will never be again."

"I wish I could see things the way you see them," Miranda said, toeing off her boots. She leaned back, raised her buttocks and wriggled into her jeans.

"You will," Sydney said. "Soon."

"Soon, soon. You always say soon," Miranda retorted. Her tone, however, was light. It didn't do any good to nag. She had already tried nagging. He just looked at her with a condescending smile, like she was a child begging for a sweet. "You might have all the time in the world, buster," she went on, buttoning her jeans, "but this old bird ain't getting any younger."

"I just want you to be certain."

"I am certain. Who wouldn't want to live forever?"

"I don't offer you immortality," Sydney said. "Only a chance of it. The transformation might kill you. It might make you a monster…"

"But I might become an Eternal."

"Like the one who made me what I am," Sydney said with a nod.

"Gon."

"My immortal father," Sydney said. "And then you would outlive me. Gon made me a powerful blood drinker. Very long lived. Nearly indestructible. But I am no Eternal. I can be destroyed. And someday-- a thousand years from now, perhaps-- I will die."

"But it could happen. I could become an Eternal."

"It is possible, though not very likely. There are very few true immortals. My maker was one of them. He called it a curse."

Miranda thought about it as she tied her bootlaces. Really she was thinking of her parents, both of whom had died of cancer in the past 18 months, her mother first, the womb that had born four children turning black and lethal in her belly, and then her father six months later, his lungs devoured by the disease. Miranda had cared for them both, giving up her career as an elementary school teacher to see them through their final days. Her three siblings, who always seemed to have more important things to do, had visited infrequently, although they had plenty of time to sue the estate after her parents had passed. Miranda had fed them, bathed them, driven them to their painful and often humiliating medical treatments, watching them wither day by day until they perished, frail and gray and shriveled to the bone. In the end, they had looked more like mummies than living human beings, bald, teeth jutting grotesquely from their tautly stretched lips. After seeing her creators through those final, horrifying indignities, she was hard pressed to imagine any real disadvantage to immortality. Despite Sydney's assurances, that particular ointment seemed delightfully free of flies.

"A curse," she repeated, and he could tell by the way she snorted that she did not believe it. She would probably never believe it. Not unless he gave her the Blood. Not until she had lived a hundred years or so. Maybe then, when the world had changed and she had not, when she realized there was no end to it, and that she would just keep living and living, maybe then she would be able to imagine eternity… and come to fear it. But not now. Not while she was a mortal woman.

He couldn't blame her. At times he also found it hard to believe as his maker had believed-- that eternal life was a curse and death a sweet release from human suffering. In fact, he was running from death when he first crossed paths with the vampire.

He was a mortal boy then, only sixteen years old and already a killer. This was in northern Texas, what they called the Panhandle, and it was the year 1882.