The Vampire's Seduction (30 page)

“Ah, but you are. And this is the time to put away childish games.” He sat down next to my bare right arm. “Now we shall see about this voodoo blood. I wanted you to be awake for this. I intend to have a little taste,” he said, then sank his fangs into my wrist like a ravenous dog.

Pain is a definite drawback to being one of the living, immortal or otherwise. Through the years I’d learned to deal with it, to block the worst of it. But this pain was like none I’d ever known—razor-sharp teeth on bone. The sensation scoured my body like a withering wind.

Where my body shrank away, my hate propelled me into motion. With a howl of pure fury that echoed off the walls, I gave one huge heave, arching my back against the weight holding me down. The stone teetered for a moment, then began to slide sideways.

Reedrek, forced to move or be crushed, hissed in aggravation, spraying my own blood across my arm and face as he braced the falling stone. I heaved again, but he held the slab in place. I thought he might curse me then, or kill me. I hoped for the latter. Instead I saw the fist-size rock in his hand as it descended toward my face. Then I saw nothing.

Bells were ringing. The sad clanging church bells of a funeral procession. Without the help of Lalee’s shells, I floated above the scene like a bird gliding on a steady wind. An English wind. The smell of sun on grass and stone. As I looked out over the sunlit fields and rock-lined road, the tightness in my chest eased, and I drew in a deep breath of home. The mourners below me carried two wooden coffins toward open graves in a field across from a churchyard.
Unconsecrated ground,
I heard one woman whisper behind her hand. I swung lower and looked more closely as the priest hitched up his habit and followed the few mourners through the weeds. Something about him seemed familiar. Then I realized it was Father Gifford from my own parish in Derbyshire. This must be a vision of how they’d buried me, and my sweet Diana.

Her soul seemed very close as I bent over her coffin for one brief moment and touched the lone flower someone had placed on the lid. My heartfelt wish to see my beloved wife one more time lodged in my chest.

I’m so sorry I didn’t save you, love. So sorry . . .

New grief seized me as though I hadn’t spent five hundred years getting over the loss. Fierce tears burned my face. I wanted to pound on the coffin lid until it burst open and set my wife free. But it would do little good. She was dead—already, in a way, free. Not trapped in the dark like me.

“My wife—her soul is pure. She should’ve been buried in our family plot next to the church,” I said, although no one could hear. They wasted little time lowering the coffins into the unmarked graves.

“May God have mercy on their souls,” the priest said, then dusted his hands as though the pagan process had made them dirty. At least the villagers had not burned us like witches.

“I want my mother,” I heard a child groan.

“Shush, dear. Your mum is dead and your da, too.”

I glanced up as a woman hefted a young boy into her sturdy arms. Juney Cecil, she’d been Diana’s maidservant. “Don’t fret,” she crooned. “You’re comin’ to live wi’ me and James now.”

Surprise held me captive as I looked at my son, my living son, Will. Damaged—there was a crude bandage on his neck—but alive. Juney turned and started back down the path with Will crying in her arms. He’d survived after all. Thinking to help him, I followed them for several paces until I realized there was nothing I could offer him, not help, not comfort, not even explanations. With eyes that had lived too long and seen too much, I watched my son disappear once again out of my life.
Good-bye Will . . . Papa loves you still. I have not forgotten you through the empty years.

Left among the grave diggers covering the graves, I searched for some sort of calm. Unless time was a twisted trickster, Will had long since lived whatever life he’d found and had died a normal human death. Whether this brief vision of him was granted by heaven or hell, I couldn’t say. It felt like a glimpse of both. But if God truly existed, how had he let my family come to this unnatural end?

“No use putting too much care into it,” I said to the grave digger covering my coffin. “I’ll be digging through and out soon enough.” The words may have sounded like the cry of a bird for all the attention he paid to them. I looked up toward the Godless sky and found myself high in the clouds again, among bright white, angel-hair clouds lit by the glorious setting sun. The beautiful sight seemed to squeeze my already bruised heart. Then, just as I imagined I’d finally escaped darkness, the ocean below me shifted to darker and darker blues until the clouds disappeared and stars twinkled above me. In the distance I spied a coastline, and as I approached it I found a river that I followed to a harbor filled with ships.

Savannah.

Gone were the big hotels and the new convention center on Hutchinson Island. This was sometime in the past, when the docks on the river were smaller, the unpaved distance between the river road and the water less wide. When there were few streetlamps and more dark business was done in the open. I drifted over my own shipping yard, casually assessing the year. Since the outer dock had yet not been built, I had to guess it was sometime in the early 1930s—during what the humans called the Great Depression and before the Second World War. That war had changed the face of Savannah, especially the docks. As I mused about ship building and war trade, my feet touched ground and I recognized a familiar face in the darkness.

Jack.

He and a partner in crime were unloading some sort of contraband from a rebuilt tug and putting it into another one of Jack’s long string of behemoth automobiles. This one was black with running boards like the footboards of a horse-drawn hansom carriage.

“What are you doin’ here?” he asked, obviously surprised to see me. I could understand his confusion. This out-of-body flight without the help of Lalee’s shells seemed to have few rules and even fewer explanations. I had to assume it had something to do with the strength of my voodoo blood.

It was surprising that Jack
could
see me in this night vision. I’d settled into the part of invisible flyer. “I thought I might see how the other half lives,” I answered. The man helping Jack stopped and set down his burden, staring at me as though he saw but didn’t want to see a ghost.

“Well, you’re scarin’ the help,” Jack said, then addressed the human. “It’s all right, Leo, I can finish up here. Same place tomorrow night.”

The man nodded, never taking his gaze from my vicinity.

“Pleasant dreams,” I heard myself say. The man disappeared into the darkness. I touched the keg Leo had left behind. “And this would be?”

Jack stopped, his hands on his hips. “Surely you’re not here to give me a lecture on breaking Prohibition. You know I run moonshine.” He nudged the keg with his foot. “This would be it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, of course I knew that. I just haven’t had the occasion to see you in the process of doing it.”

He shrugged. “Not very glamorous but it does pay the bills. I have to run this batch up Charleston way.” He continued loading his wares into the car. “So what brings your lordship down to the docks? Don’t you and the other swells play cards over at the Desoto on Friday nights?”

“Ah yes, the Desoto. I miss that old hotel.” I’d been one of the original investors. Let’s see, that would’ve been 1890 or so.

“Whaddaya mean, you miss it? It’s pretty hard to miss a hotel that takes up an entire city block. You know, the one with the verandas and stained-glass windows?” He peered at me in the dark. “Are you drunk or somethin’?”

“ ‘Or something’ would probably be the case.”

After a gesture of impatience with my answer, he put the last keg in the car. “You want me to drop you off around there?”

“Why don’t I ride with you while you make your deliveries?”

“Now I know you’re drunk. I can’t take someone dressed like you to the places I go. It’d be like wearing a tuxedo to a craps game.”

I looked down and saw that my imagination had dressed me in Armani again. I shrugged out of the jacket, loosened the cuffs, and rolled up the sleeves of my dress shirt. “This better?”

Jack rolled his eyes.

I ignored him and got into the car on the passenger side. There were two small kegs on the seat and I tossed them into the backseat. Jack’s personal stash, no doubt. “Are you coming?”

We rode through the city in silence. I found it entertaining to see the old streets and buildings. For an immortal, time passes slowly, but even at a snail’s pace it’s difficult to notice every change that happens around me. To see this glimpse of the past was like watching the living history of the city I’d come to call my own. And the people I called my own as well.

Most humans romanticize the past as though life was simpler in bygone days. As one who has witnessed half a millennium I would beg to differ. Each decade and generation has its own peculiar opportunities or challenges, and the humans who populate those times believe their talents and failings are unique. The philosopher who said that history repeats itself is absolutely correct. The clothes, currencies, and top dogs may change but the underlying human nature remains constant. Thank goodness I am dead and have learned from my mistakes.

“Why the hell do you want to go with me, anyhow?” Jack asked just after we’d rumbled over a small bridge on our way out of town.

“It’s difficult to explain.”

“Try me.”

“All right.” It wouldn’t hurt to tell him. He’d never believe me, anyway. “The William you’re seeing is not the William you know.”

“Huh?” Now he sounded annoyed rather than curious.

“The William that you know is probably at this very moment playing cards at the Desoto as you thought.”

“Are you trying to tell me there’re two of you?” He slowed the car as if he was thinking of leaving me there.

“I guess you could call this one a vision.”

“Of Christmas past, I suppose,” he scoffed, driving on.

“No,” I said. “Of Christmas future.”

We were flying along the tabby-paved road now—without the benefit of headlamps. Either Jack was in his usual hurry, or he was pressing the accelerator without realizing it. I looked out over the marsh but the darkness was nearly complete except for the moon rising through the trees. The warm breeze was musty with the smells of stagnant water and rotting vegetation.

“You’re not real then? I mean this you, not the other one.”

“Right.” There were so many things I wanted to tell him. Things I should have said, should have shared. But first I needed to explain so he would believe me. “My mind is here but my body is—” A sudden weakness rocked my concentration. My body . . . was trapped in an underground mausoleum. Perhaps dying. Leaving something—my life—behind. Only this time was different, I realized. That was why my blood had brought me on this walkabout through time. Maybe I couldn’t go back and hold Will or tell him his papa never forgot him. But I could try to save Jack. Give him enough to survive. All I had to do was say the words and make him believe them. I could feel time running out like grains through a hole in a sackful of sand.
There’s no time.
“I want you to know Jack, that whatever happens in the future—that I’m sorry . . . that I truly—”

The car slowed. Jack had stopped looking at the road; he’d shifted his questioning gaze to me. My chest felt crushed. I found it hard to breathe. “Don’t tru-ust Reedrek,” I managed.

I heard Jack say, “Wait! Who? What’s wrong?”

But I was too far away to hear. The pain returned like a tidal wave, not only flooding my head but the body I now inhabited again. My infernal luck had run out. I felt very near the end of my existence.

I worked to whisper, “Good-bye Jack,” before opening my eyes. Then I was staring at Reedrek’s smiling face.

“Back again, are we?”

Jack

I carefully followed the tunnels, navigating by the street grates overhead, until I knew I was underneath the garage. Along the way I’d found an old pickax, which I now used to dig into what I was pretty sure was the oil pit under the first bay, near the center of the building, away from the front and side windows. I had a lot of energy, not all of it physical, to burn off. I used the strength I’d accidentally taken from Shari and Olivia to dig past the thin layer of concrete and into the pit where we stood to do lube jobs. It was a good way to blow off steam, too. I was still pissed at William for leaving me alone to make Shari and for not telling me about the tunnels.

Just as I was cracking the concrete lining of the pit, the half-rotted handle of the pickax broke. I gouged the rest of the way in with the blade. Was Olivia telling the truth when she said we’d be better off with Reedrek? Hell, maybe I should just go all evil and be done with it.

All of a sudden I sensed William. It wasn’t as if I could tell that he was nearby or anything; it was just a feeling I can’t explain. I also flashed back to the ’32 Cadillac LaSalle I’d used to run liquor. The law in those days knew the car and my shady business, but when I hit the gas none of their rattletraps could catch me. The coincidence was weird because I don’t ever remember William getting involved with my ‘shine-running operation. He’d turned a blind eye to it . . . Then the flashback was gone as quickly as it had sprung to mind.

When I’d mined a hole big enough to crawl through, I stuck my arm in as far as it would go. It didn’t catch fire so I stuck my head through and looked up. The sun coming from the windows did not reach the back corner of the pit where I was. Goody. I crawled through the hole—which I figured I could use from now on to access the tunnels from the garage whenever I needed—and came up the steel stairs to the main floor.

My office was in the interior of the building, so it had no windows. Neither did the bathroom and tiny shower I’d put in. I flipped on the light and made a beeline for the bathroom. I stood under the shower and let the hot water warm me. I had a lot to think about. If I’d been human I would have thrown my CD collection and some clothes into the ’Vette and just taken off for the West Coast. Always wanted to see California and the Pacific Ocean. But that was a little impractical for a vampire. I could just see myself driving down the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down. Besides, there was that troublesome vampire rule—one of the few William had actually told me about. A vampire must wait upward of two centuries before he can spend a night away from his sire. Sixty more years to go. Sighing, I turned my face up toward the soothing water.