Barb Hendee: Blood Memories

"You're going to kill yourself, aren't you?"

"I'm tired," he whispered.

"Don't do it."

He didn't answer, and we just sat there like that, not saying anything until five thirty, when I saw streaks of light peeping through the eastern sky.

I tried lifting him. "We've got to get underground."

He crawled to his feet but didn't head toward the cellar door. Instead he walked into the living room and restarted the Tchaikovsky album at max volume. Francesca da Rimini screamed out the front windows.

I panicked.

"Stop it! Turn it off. We've got to get below."

Looking back now, I think he wanted the neighbors to complain. He wanted someone to find what he'd been doing in the house. He wanted the police to show up, and I never did understand why.

But my stomach lurched when the blue and red flashing lights pulled up in front of his house.

Grabbing his shoulder, I tried pulling him for the cellar door. He threw me off easily and looked at me with something close to contempt. "We don't really live forever, baby. We just cheat for a while."

Rays from the morning sun filtered in through the living room window and touched the carpet. Two policemen and a tall, blond guy in faded Levi's were walking up Edward's front lawn. The whole world shifted into slow motion as he kissed my forehead and started running toward the door.

Nothing could have stopped him. As his half-naked form burst out onto the front porch, screaming like an animal in pain, one of the cops pulled a gun. I just stood there.

He loved imported tobacco and Savile Row suits. He loved sitting by the hearth and playing chess. He loved dancing at midnight and watching Monty Python films. He loved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels. He looked hot in a black tux. The sanest vampire I'd ever known.

He was on fire before his feet hit the grass. Both uniformed cops jumped back, and the guy in Levi's just stood his ground, staring-like me. I had to go, to run before somebody spotted me, but I stayed frozen by the window watching as Edward sank down in a burning heap on the lawn. He had once told me what happens when we die. At the time I hadn't believed him.

It hit me like a wall falling down, almost visible. The psychic energy of a thousand lives burst from Edward's mind like prisoners fleeing their cage. I saw a thousand deaths, a thousand lives lost. The terror and anger and pain cut through me in an unstoppable flow. The carpet rushed up, and I lay there writhing until the pain faded. Edward had told me that only others of our kind would feel this agony… this release, and would know that one of us had passed over.

Poor Edward.

Fear and instinct pushed me up onto all fours.

The police would be calling for backup or entering the house on their own any second. But while crawling toward the cellar, I heard someone else screaming, and I forced myself to look back outside. The light hurt my eyes. The guy in jeans was rolling on the ground, holding his head.

Something touched my mind, something alien-not Edward. It was the blond man on the ground, frightened and suffering. I could feel him, see the scattered, disoriented terror running through him. But he was mortal. He shouldn't have felt anything.

The house. What would they learn when they searched the house? I looked about wildly for anything to take with me. I'd never been awake this late. My eyes burned, and my legs were weak. Edward's personal address book lay under the phone. I grabbed it and stumbled for the cellar door, looking back only once at the large, framed photograph of myself hanging over his fireplace.

My eyes opened to darkness. Like an infallible clock, my internal second hand woke me precisely at twelve minutes past sundown. In our inverted world, this almost physical connection to time was a blessing and a curse-or that's what Edward once told me. He never liked his world to be too regulated.

Edward.

I lay on his mattress.

He had divided his cellar into four dingy storage rooms, with no soft carpets or velvet furniture, not even linoleum-just aging floorboards. Most of us keep mementos of past time periods, reminding us to flow and change and evolve with each new generation. Edward had never purchased a bed, though, and he had been sleeping on a sheet-less Posturepedic mattress for years. That old folktale about coffins is a lie. I'd get claustrophobic.

Like projections against a blank wall, images from that morning flashed before me: his face, hair, and fingers bursting into flames. Had it hurt? Did death hurt us? I couldn't mourn him yet, or I'd get lost inside myself, and survival always outranks emotion.

What had happened while I slept?

The police had probably searched the house from floor to ceiling. The tiny space I now occupied was hidden behind an invisible door in the west wall. At least they hadn't found me.

Listening for a full minute, I heard nothing. I pushed on the sliding panel once to release it.

Empty room.

Odd smell, sweet and musty.

Was it floating down from the mess in his kitchen? God, what had the cops thought of that? Slipping Edward's address book inside my jacket, I stepped out to find the stench growing stronger, and to see a pile of torn-up floorboards. They'd torn the floor up? Why? Rotting shards of wood and fresh, uneven piles of dirt lay all around me.

Then I noticed a small, gray-white spot in the dirt and leaned down to look closer. It was a bone, part of an index finger.

"No."

My mind couldn't accept the implication. We disposed of bodies, dumped off or disguised, as far from ourselves as possible-meaningless dried husks no longer connected to us. Had he been carrying corpses home or luring live victims into his house and draining them here? A madman. Two facts shone brightly through this haze. First, he'd been sliding in and out of reality long before last night, and second… this situation was far from over.

How many bodies had they found? The authorities would probably consider Edward a psycho killer who'd finally lost it and committed suicide.

Maybe they were right.

It was all a matter of perspective. But right now, the whole sordid story was being aired on the evening news.

I had to get out of the house.

Apparently, the police had removed the bodies. In fact, they'd gutted the entire basement. I kicked up cold, loose dirt running for the stairs. The upper floor was a shambles, but nothing seemed to have been removed yet. However, I didn't stop for inventory and moved straight for the front door.

And there, parked right in front of the house, in all its bright red glory, was my main concern. Since I'd been trapped inside all day, my little Mazda had been just sitting there for the police to go over with a fine-tooth comb.

I looked up and down the street. Well… other cars were parked nearby, so perhaps they'd run a check on all of them.

In any event, it was likely the authorities had done a search on my license plate by now and located my name and address. Bastards.

Managing to keep the needle under sixty all the way home was difficult, but getting pulled over could have been a tragedy.

William had been home alone all this time. Fear and anger surfaced slowly through my numb layers of skin. The house we lived in was perfect: back in the trees, high fence, deep basement, few neighbors-and private ones at that. Now we were going to have to move. Where? There wouldn't be time to find us someplace secure or permanent. Whatever I came up with would have to be fast and temporary.

Not bothering to put my car in the garage, I ran up the outdoor steps and through our back door.

"William?"

The interior wasn't exactly gothic. Our kitchen was actually quite cheery in spite of the fact that we didn't use it for much, decorated in soft yellow tones. I'd bought the house new back in 1912, but it had undergone several major renovations since then. Keeping up normal appearances was an art that Edward had drilled into my head nearly a hundred and seventy years ago.