A Vampire's Christmas Carol (7 page)

“My pie!” her mother screamed and headed for
the kitchen. The smell had grown stronger as tendrils of dark smoke
floated into the living room.

“Wait,” she called as her mother reached for
the oven door. “Don’t open it. Just turn it off.” Carol followed
her into the kitchen. A look through the oven’s window confirmed
her suspicion. Little tongues of flame lit the area inside. Her
mother glanced at her, nodded and reached carefully for the switch
to flip it off.

Carol dug in the pantry closet and found the
fire extinguisher. After pulling out the pin, she waited. It took a
few minutes, but without the heat feeding them, the flames finally
died down. She continued to watch it while her mother went around
opening windows and propping doors ajar to let in fresh, cold
December air.

Two pots sitting on the stove-top were
emitting suspicious aromas as well. Gingerly, keeping the fire
extinguisher handy, she raised lids. One pot held a thick
orangey-red sludge that smelled like very burnt tomato sauce. The
other one still had half an inch of water in the bottom, with a
large gooey lump of badly overcooked pasta sitting in the middle.
She turned the heat off under both.

From back in the guest room, she heard the
dog yip and whine. She hoped it meant Laura had him contained
somehow. Then Matthew started whining as well.

Carol carefully opened the oven door. Nothing
flamed up again, but the oven was a disaster, with semi-carbonized
blobs of goo all over the place and a pile of it at the bottom.
What was supposed to be an apple pie looked like a charred
cardboard disc surrounding sticky black lumps.

She put both pots to soak in the sink, but
the pie pan was a goner. It went into a trash bag along with its
contents and the contents of both pots. Carol trotted the bag right
out to the trash bin outside. By the time she got back, her mother
stood in the kitchen, considering the mess with a bemused
expression.

“I guess we’ll have to open some cans for
dinner,” she said.

Carol nodded.

They ate canned spaghetti and wieners, canned
green beans and canned fruit for dinner. Afterward they hung
stockings, Laura disappeared to put Matt to bed and her mom broke
out the eggnog. Her father added a dollop of bourbon to everyone’s
cup but Jason’s. She noticed he put a second, larger dash in his
own cup. Someone had swept up the glass and rearranged the
ornaments on the tree to reduce the gaps left by the missing and
broken decorations.

Normally she loved sitting around with her
family in front of the fire on Christmas Eve, but the day had been
too long. Besides, she still had wrapping to do. After just half an
hour of the usual reminiscing about Christmases past and the year
getting close to its finish, Carol retired to her room and raced
through the wrapping so she could get to bed.

The next day started shaky and got worse. The
baby woke them all at four-thirty, howling at the top of her lungs.
Matthew got up then too, and was ready to tear into the pile of
presents stacked around the barely rescued train set under the
barely rescued tree.

The gift-opening actually went pretty
smoothly once Matthew had shredded the wrappings of all his toys
and been convinced that the packages weren’t all for him. He sat
and cuddled the puppy, for which Laura had created a makeshift
leash from an old belt and some rope, while the adults exclaimed
over their gifts.

Carol got some wonderful things from her
family, including a lovely sweater from her mother, a nice
stationery set and diary from Laura and even a cute poster from
Jason. Christmas, it appeared, was back on track.

Until she joined her mother in the kitchen
later to help with preparations for dinner and discovered that her
mother had put the roast in the oven, but forgotten to turn it
on.

* * * * *

“We ended up having canned soup and
sandwiches for Christmas dinner,” Carol said. “Now, every year, I
go in and make sure she’s remembered to turn the oven on.”

“Your family is amaz—”

Michael’s fingers twitched, then the shaking
began to spread to his arms and torso. “Don’t— Don’t get close,” he
warned. “Stay…away.” The tremors grew worse and he closed his eyes,
his body tensing as he struggled for control.

The shaking grew so violent, he fell off the
chair onto the floor, where he lay writhing and making odd choking
noises. Carol stood and moved toward him to see if she could help,
until his eyes opened. They shone with a blood-red glow.

She backed away, praying he wouldn’t follow.
She stopped after a few steps. He had so little control of himself
just then that he couldn’t threaten her as long as she didn’t get
too close. The stake was still in her left hand, so she moved it to
her right again, holding it ready should he recover suddenly.

He lay on the floor, writhing uncontrollably,
flipping over to roll a few times, then doing an odd swimming
motion on the rug. All the while, he continued to shake and his
breath became a loud series of pants, broken by the occasional
moan. It went on for much longer than any of the previous spells,
ten or fifteen minutes at least.

Her heart twisted with pity and fear. No one
deserved to suffer like this, no matter what he’d done. And Michael
had done nothing. All this had come about because he’d tried to
help an unfortunate victim, and now he was struggling not to do
something evil.

The clock struck four while she waited. Carol
half expected Antoine to materialize again, since he’d shown up the
last time right on the hour of two. He didn’t, though.

Michael’s breath puffed in and out on a
series of hard pants as he writhed on the floor. She found it
nearly unbearable to watch, yet she didn’t dare take her eyes off
him. She couldn’t tell how conscious and aware he was, but he was
most definitely in pain. A lot of it.

Watching it was one of the hardest things
she’d ever had to do, but she dared not look away either. It half
killed her to just stand there, staring, unable to do a damned
thing to help ease him. Not even touch him or hold him or brush
hair out of his face.

After ten minutes, she felt sick to her
stomach, wondering if he would come out of it again or whether
these were his death throes. He twisted harder, body bending
double, then straightening into rigid lines. His breath became
thready and harsh. The choking sounds that followed the radical
tension almost did her in.

But then he began to relax and the shaking
calmed to just above a mild tremor. He groaned, but it sounded more
deliberate and less desperate. The rhythm of his breathing changed.
While still harsh, it lengthened to sound closer to normal. He
didn’t move, however, even when the tremors finally settled down to
a more gentle quivering.

“Michael?” Carol took a hesitant step toward
him and stopped. “Are you…?” She shook her head. “Stupid question.
Of course you’re not okay. Is there anything I can do?”

He didn’t answer. He lay still, on his side,
curled into a fetal tuck for several long minutes. After a while,
he roused and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He shifted
back to rest against the side of a chair, still seated on the
floor.

Sharp lines incised his lean cheeks and
around his eyes, which sank deeper into his head than before. His
pale skin had a sickly gray cast. Cheek and jaw-bones stood out in
harsh angles. For a few minutes, his head hung forward as though he
had no strength to hold it up.

When he did finally look up, she saw flashes
of red in his eyes. Not steady, as they had been before, or
growing, but coming and going in winks of blood and fire.

“Michael?”

His eyebrows rose.

“If I staked you right now, wouldn’t it put
you out of your misery?”

“Yes, but please don’t. I want to die human,
so I have to wait for dawn. Do it if I threaten you, but otherwise,
no. I want my soul back before I die.”

“All right. Is there…anything I can do? To
help?”

He shook his head, but stopped. “Just talk to
me. Tell me more…about yourself. Why aren’t you married? You’re a
very attractive woman. Don’t you want to have a husband and a
family?”

“Of course I do. But I guess I haven’t met
the right man. My sister tells me I’m too picky. She says I’ve read
too many fantasy novels and I’m holding out for a hero. Maybe it’s
true too. And heroes are hard to come by these days. But most of
the men I’ve met… I don’t know. There isn’t any spark there. So I’m
still waiting.”

“You want a prince, like in the fairy tales?
How many frogs have you kissed?”

“Way too many. And swallowed a poisoned apple
or two, pricked my finger a few times, even tolerated a couple of
beasts—until I realized they really were just beasts—but still no
prince galloping to the rescue. Actually, I don’t really need a
prince or a hero. Just the right man.”

“If not a prince or a hero, what do you want
in a man?”

“I want a man who’s intelligent, strong—not
so much physically, but in character—kind, caring, has a good sense
of humor, hard-working and likes kids, science fiction movies and
good food. Not so much, really, is it?”

He shrugged and struggled for a pain-filled
grin. “Seems like you should find one on every corner.”

“I wish.”

“What do you find on all those corners?”

“A lot of little boys in big boys’ bodies.
More than a few who were so self-centered they barely noticed what
anyone else was doing. A few so focused on being successful, they
forgot to be real people. You get the picture. And I’m not really
all that demanding. Some of my terms are negotiable, like the food
thing.”

“And you still haven’t found a good one.
Shocking.”

Carol sighed. “I know. I sometimes wonder if
I will. I’m almost twenty-seven now.”

“Just a baby. I’m a hundred and twenty-nine,
you know.”

“And don’t look a day over a hundred and
twenty-eight.”

“Flattery will— Oh, hell.”

Carol followed his line of sight to the mist
forming behind her to the left. She turned so that she could keep
both Michael and Antoine in her line of sight. The vampire formed
quickly, the cloudy spot roiling for only a few seconds before it
coalesced.

His handsome, cruel face broke into an ugly
smile when he saw Michael sitting on the floor and noted how he
rested against the side of a chair as though lacking the strength
to push himself upright. Then the smile melted into an unconvincing
attempt at sympathy.

“Michael, you look terrible, dear boy.” The
concern in his tone didn’t ring any truer than his smile. “Why are
you doing this to yourself?” He strolled across the room to stand
over the younger man. “It’s so unnecessary.”

“Totally necessary,” Michael said from
between clenched teeth. “And forget the fake sympathy. The only
thing that concerns you is losing a slave. And maybe losing face
before the others because of it.”

Antoine shrugged. “It’s a concern, but not a
great one. There are others where you came from. But why are you
wasting the gift I gave you?”

“Some kind of gift,” Michael answered
bitterly. “A gift I neither sought nor wanted. And not one you gave
willingly.”

“A gift nonetheless. Immortality. Who doesn’t
want it?”

“At the price of one’s soul? Because you get
all those extra lifetimes by stealing them from the people they
belonged to?”

“They’re lesser creatures.” Antoine dismissed
his victims with a wave of his hand. “We’re superior in every way.
Fast, powerful, immortal.”

“And completely immoral. Cowardly, soulless
monsters.”

“There’s no reasoning with you, is there,
Michael?”

“No.”

“I suppose I’ll just have to let the blood
lust do its work. You know that as long as she’s here, you’ll never
succeed. At the end you won’t be able to resist. Your will won’t
work anymore when the pain and need drive you insane.”

“Only a few more hours to go till dawn. I can
manage.”

Antoine shook his head and laughed. It
sounded forced. “We’ll see. I think I’ll just hang around to watch
for a bit. If it makes you more comfortable, I’ll dematerialize so
you won’t even know I’m here.” His form wavered and broke up, going
to mist again, then winking out of sight.

“Can you do that?” Carol asked Michael.

He shook his head. “Only true vampires
can.”

“Is he gone?”

He struggled to sit up straighter. “Probably
not. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. I’ve just
got to hold on…”

The word trailed off into a choked moan as
another convulsion began to shake him. It didn’t last as long this
time, but was even more violent, sending his body into a series of
contortions after he fell over onto his side. He jerked and
thrashed so hard the floor vibrated and the furniture shook. She
watched in horror as his body jackknifed into a tight V, his face
almost against his knees, and then snapped back to bow in the other
direction, slamming him so hard it would have cracked the spine of
a normal human being.

Chapter
6

He writhed on the floor for several more
minutes, banging into chairs and even rolling perilously close to
the fire at one point.

Carol wanted to go to him, especially when he
appeared to be in danger of getting toasted, but didn’t dare. So
she waited it out, listening to the seconds tick off from the clock
in the hall.

After a while, the convulsions seemed to
abate, but when he opened his eyes, the red color flickered in them
again, then settled to a steady glow. Keeping his gaze fixed on
her, he rolled onto his belly and began crawling toward her. Carol
made an effort not to look too long into his eyes. It meant raking
her gaze quickly down his face and settling in to watch his mouth
instead. That wasn’t a thrill either, since his lips formed a
vicious, open-mouthed frown that showed way too much teeth. The
fangs glittered with an orange-red glow as they reflected the
firelight. It reminded her uncomfortably of blood.