Tim Lebbon - 30 Days of Night - Fear of the Dark

“You think he’ll come around?”

Francesco shrugged. “Maybe. But right now is the worst time ever to lose him, don’t you think?”

Rose nodded. “Of course. But…”

“Rose,” he said, a warning tone.

“It’s an alternative. We turn him now and he still has access to all his contacts. He becomes one of us and—”

“He’s too filled with hatred. Too consumed by it. We turn him, and he’ll likely become one of them .”

“No. We can guide him, teach him.”

“Rose, you’re young,” Francesco said, and his age came through in every word. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. A knee-jerk reaction like that might be the end of us. Keeping him alive as he is is risk enough.”

“Fine,” Rose said.

“Rose?”

“Fine, Francesco. I agree.” She had never dared ask why he had chosen her to turn, fearing that it had been random. She wanted to feel special. In a way, what he’d just said went some way to confirming that she was.

“Get him upstairs to his computer room,” Francesco said. “I’ll carry your brother.”

“Be gentle with him.”

Francesco only raised an eyebrow, then picked up Marty under one arm and climbed the stairs. If the crossbow bolt in his right hip was bothering him, he showed no sign.

Rose knew what Francesco was going to do, and how he was going to do it. She’d seen him torturing a vampire for information only the night before, and now she knew that he would display the other side of his personality. Cool, calm, affable. Persuasive.

Lee was regaining consciousness. Rose squatted before him, able now to ignore the smell and heat of the blood leaking from the small wound on the back of his head. He lifted his head and focused on her, catching his breath. She gave him a friendly smile.

“He’ll give you one chance to live,” she said as she picked him up, as easily as lifting a small child. “I suggest you take it.”

They sat Lee in his own leather swivel chair, turned away from his computer to face the room. His head was throbbing, and when he flexed his scalp, he felt the wound and the stickiness of drying blood. His throat hurt where Rose had grabbed him. His right index finger was on fire, bent back at a terrible angle. But the shaking had nothing to do with these various pains. That was all fear.

I’m a vampire’s servant, just like Renfield, he thought, and could barely imagine anything worse. Instead of fighting the bastard creatures he hated so much, he had been aiding them all this time. And they had been using him like a naïve marionette, tweaking strings as and when they wanted to, walking him here, guiding him there.

How the fucking hell could he have been so stupid?

He looked at Rose and tried to see the vampire within. She had sat her brother—her human, vulnerable, living brother—on one of the casual chairs he kept in his office. She was caring for him, letting him lean against her hip. Her left hand rested on his shoulder. He’d only ever seen Rose at night, because that was when she and the others could get away from their lives to come to him. Pretend lives, he knew now, though none of them had ever needed to make anything up. He had always assumed. He thought Francesco might have been a lecturer, perhaps even a priest. And Rose he had pegged for a nurse, maybe with a young professional husband who went to the gym some evenings, leaving his wife to live her own life and have her own activities outside work. But no: during the day, these two hid from the sunlight, and he would never forgive himself for not realizing something sooner.

His blind hatred for the vampire had been the very thing that let them get close to him.

Perhaps now, because he knew, he saw things in Rose that he should have noticed before. Her fingernails were as pale as the skin around them. Her eyes, the pupils unnaturally large, didn’t seem to reflect as much light as they should. She was graceful and confident, moving like a shadow. He’d thought perhaps she danced.

He giggled. It was a horrible sound.

“Laugh at this,” Francesco said. The tall vampire stood in the center of the room and grabbed the crossbow bolt embedded in his hip. The head was barbed, the bulb of garlic paste and holy water clasped in metal braces that would have parted and spread on impact. As he pulled it out of himself with one sharp tug, the sound was sickening.

Francesco winced, and Lee felt bile rising in his throat.

“Not laughing?” Francesco asked. He threw the bolt at Lee’s feet. It hit one of the chair’s wheels and rebounded, leaving a stain of bloodied meat shreds on the pale carpet. Lee stared at the bolt and wondered why it hadn’t worked. The bulb had shattered, as he had designed it to, and the shaft was bent from where it had struck one of Francesco’s bones.

“Look at me,” the vampire said.

“No.”

“Lee,” Rose said softly. He’ll give you one chance to live, she had told him. He remembered that much, through the fog of unconsciousness. He looked up.

Francesco pulled up a chair and turned it around, sitting on it backwards to face Lee. He was no monster. Taller than most, handsome in the weathered way only older men can be, there were no fangs dripping blood down his chin, no hissing.

But when Rose came at me, those teeth, that fury —

“She could have bitten your throat out and drank your blood, you know,” Francesco said. “Some of us would have. Some would have broken your arms and legs first, working the shattered bones so that they punctured your flesh and arteries, feeding from you that way. Others… they’re old-fashioned. They prefer the throat, so that they can see the terror in their victim’s eyes. And sometimes the pleasure. For some, having their throat bitten into and crushed by a vampire triggers the same response as asphyxiation by rope. They get an instant erection, and orgasm while the monster’s drinking their true life fluid. Does Rose give you an erection, Lee?”

“No,” he scoffed.

“That’s because she didn’t bite your neck to feed from you. Or crush your limbs. Even when she saw and smelled your blood. And you know why that is?”

“Because I’m black? Not her vintage?”

Francesco blinked twice, quickly, and that simple expression of impatience drove a cool spear of terror into Lee.

“It’s because we don’t kill for blood,” Francesco said. “Most vampires do, as I know you’re aware. But we call ourselves Humains. We live alongside humans. We need blood, true, and we get it, but we never kill for it. In the same way that you’d choose not to kill your own meat, but you procure it nevertheless.”

“I’ve seen the DVD of Barrow that Andy Gray sent me. You sat here and watched it with me.”

“Vampires. Not Humains.”

Lee shook his head and winced at the pain that caused.

“I’ll not plead with you, Lee,” Francesco said. “You tried to kill me, and while I admire your dedication to your cause, that still pisses me off. It’s amusing that you used garlic and holy water, but not enough to make me laugh. The garlic’s burning like fuck, to be honest. Thanks for that. Maybe I should cut you and stick some in you, show you what it feels like. Some chopped chili too? Salt?”

Lee shrugged. He tried to maintain eyes contact with Francesco but couldn’t, so he kept glancing at Rose and Marty instead. Marty was awake now, staring at him. He smiled, but the kid didn’t smile back.

“I’ll not plead, but I’ll reason. Humain to human. Tell me you’ll entertain that, at least.”

Lee closed his eyes, feeling the hatred seething inside him like a nest of wood ants in his gut. There was hatred for himself, too, for being fooled for so long. Phil’s memory seemed blurred by his inability to do anything to avenge his death.