Chapter 1.
Terrill awoke to an empty mirror. Empty but for the bland motel décor, the tousled
bed with its too many pillows and overstuffed bedspread, innocuous framed
pictures of leaves on the walls.
Empty though the mirror was right in front of his face. She
probably thought he was dead. Sometimes when he slept, he forgot to
mimic the motions of breathing. She was
probably just trying to see if his breath would fog the mirror. Oh, god. Why had she done this? The part of him that was human struggled to
control the part of him that was immortal.
No! His mind shouted. Leave her be!
The vampiric instincts were in full command, the same
instincts that had kept him alive for a millennium. The small vessel of empathy he’d managed to
fill drip by drip in recent years disappeared in an overpowering blood lust, his
fangs fully extended, dripping with the venom that would paralyze her.
The little white hand holding the mirror looked bloodless,
though Terrill had yet to take her blood.
The female was naked and pale in fright from head to toe. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, her
breast quivering. No predator could have
passed up such a pure victim. Terrell
instantly flushed with the rush of the hunt, his sleepiness evaporating in a
surge of hunger.
Again his mind fought against the overwhelming urges. Don’t do it!
Let her go! Let her live, damn
you!
She screamed, dropping the mirror to the floor with a
crash. It shattered. Seven years of bad luck – or in Terrill’s
case, seven hundred years. In the case
of the girl, not even seven seconds of bad luck. She made it halfway across the room before
Terrill flew out of the bed and sank his fangs into her neck.
Don’t…oh, god. It was
so good. He had missed this so
much. Why did she wake him? Why did she excite the monster inside him? His mind was screaming Stop!
Now it was too late. Once
a vampire started feeding, he couldn’t stop until it was finished.
She was dead in seconds.
He saw himself in her dying eyes – the only way he could
ever see his reflection. He hadn’t seen
himself in twenty years. It didn’t
matter; he looked the same -- sharp
saturnine features, eyes glowing in lust, frowning in his hunger, black hair
immaculate even in his wild feeding.
He laid her lifeless body gently to the floor. Guilt wrapped around his shoulders like an
old familiar shawl. He nearly staggered. Inside he felt the savage rush, the
exhilaration he hadn’t felt in a very long time. But the thinking part of him, the part to
which he’d sacrificed the last twenty years, was sickened. It was gone; all the effort had come to
nothing. He was the soulless creature
he’d always been. Nothing could change
that.
Joy. That was the
name she’d given him. When she signed
into the motel, she had used the name Jamie.
She should have stuck to Jamie – a prettier name, a name that was
real. Just as she should’ve stuck to her
hometown origins, gotten a job as a waitress, attended community college, met a
nice stupid boy – who knows where she would have ended up.
Not here. Not dead.
The scream still hung in the air, and Terrill extended his
hearing to the neighbors on either side and to the street outside.
Nothing. The people who inhabited this seedy motel were no doubt used to
screams in the night -- used to ignoring them.
Quiet as a tomb.
He took a shower, got dressed and left. It was
considerate of him, to close the door quietly, walking softly down the rickety
stairs, and out into the empty street.
He was always considerate.
He made it to the end of the block. The streetlamp was
at half strength, flickering. There was a false dawn on the horizon, but
real dawn would soon follow, within the hour, thirty-four minutes to be
exact. Terrill could calculate this timing nearly to the second.
He turned back, made his way to the top of the landing --
his senses were on alert. There was no one about -- no one awake or
watching. He slipped back into the room.
She lay at an unnatural tangle -- arms akimbo overhead, her
legs drawn up behind her. He straightened her body, smoothed her
hair. He took the heavy bedspread and tucked her inside. He closed
her frightened eyes.
At the last second, he took the necklace from the table by
the bed. The crucifix burned into his
hand before he put it into his pocket.
Even there, it was as if he could feel its power. Why?
He didn’t know. He just knew that
he needed some part of her to come with him, and the crucifix was important to
her.
He kissed her on the forehead, and left the room in the same
manner as before. There was a glimmering of dawn. The skin on his
face felt taut, as if preparing for the pain. His car was three blocks
away.
He made it just in time.
The windows were tinted to just the right level of shade --
he could see the light of dawn, he could even drive, but the burning -- the
hellfire -- was held at bay. He crawled into the back seat and closed his
eyes.
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