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Drafts of Tales of the Slayer 4 (Part 1)
A draft from the book "Tales of the Slayer 4" has become available. |
 Extract from Undeadsville by Michael Reaves.
New York City, 1952
Vampire
The hunger.
It is the first thing - the only thing - you know. It fills you, defines you, consumes you. It flows like molten pitch through your bloodless veins, through the still, icy chambers of your heart and the dark conduits of your brain. It illuminates you, uplifts you, propels you.
It is you.
The hunger cannot be denied. It drives you against the darkness, against the imprisoning wood. You strike and claw at the barrier so close to your face, rending, pushing with a strength that, even in your state of raw need, surprises you. If your body were dependent on oxygen to fuel this effort, the tiny amount in the casket would be used up almost immediately. But your lungs remain flaccid, inflating just enough to provide the grunts and animalistic snarls you hear yourself making.
Far, far back in your mind, a part of you is confused, frightened, appalled. This is not me, it cries. This is not the person I was. Not this primal, predatory thing that howls and pants as its fingers rip through the wood, splinters gouging its nails from their roots, this thing that rumbles in savage satisfaction as chunks of graveyard dirt rain down on its face. This is not who I was!
But you realize it doesn't matter. The soul that once possessed this body is gone now - where, you neither know nor care. All that is left is a template of a personality. It's nothing you have to worry about now. It's not important.
All that's important is the hunger. All that matters is the insatiable desire to feed. You push, shove, claw your way through the implacable soil. The pressure of it grinds against your eyes, drives thick black loam down your throat. You don't care. You would crawl through the fires of hell itself to find the one thing that will quench this need, this emptiness that is equal parts hunger and thirst.
One hand bursts free of your grave.
You grope, trying to find something to grab, to hold onto. To anyone watching (and how you hope there is someone watching, someone warm, someone full of what you need) it must look like some grotesque flower blooming abruptly from the fresh-turned earth. You feel fierce joy as you pull your other arm free. Then you drag yourself up, up, until your head finally clears the ground in a savage, filthy rebirth.
You cough up dirt, spit it out. Your chuckle is guttural and thick. A final lunge and twist, and you're free! You sprawl on the grass, blinking, waiting for your eyes to focus. Six inches in front of your nose, its underground passage disturbed by the upheavals of your resurrection, an earthworm writhes. You grab it, stuff it in your mouth, swallow. It doesn't help. It's not what you need.
You stagger to your feet. The suit they buried you in is shiny and slick with dirt. You look down at it, at your mud-caked hands. You turn, see the headstone they put there to mark your passing. Mitchell Parks, it reads. Born, August 2nd, 1910; Died, December 10th, 1952. Beloved Husband, Devoted Father. You wish your wife and children were here to witness your miraculous return. How exciting it would be to see their joy turn to terror as you battened on them.
No time for such thoughts now. You didn't think it was possible, but the hunger is getting worse.
You raise your head, sniff the night breeze.
Involuntarily something happens to you: You sense your face changing, the muscles writhing beneath your skin, bony ridges rising over your eyes, your teeth lengthening into fangs. And suddenly, so suddenly that you gasp in astonishment, your senses explode into overdrive. You can hear the night. A car passes on the highway, two hundred yards away, and you can hear the sound of its engine, the radio playing a Perry Como song, and the hushed conversation of the two inside it, even though the windows are rolled up. You look around. It's said that moonlight isn't bright enough to discern colors by, but now the night seems to flower before you - the jade slivers of grass, the palette of subtle shades that make up the last few leaves, the prisms of the stars themselves.
Someone is watching you.
You suddenly recognize, through a sense you have no name for, a presence not far away, standing in the door of a crypt, observing you. This is not one of the cattle. This is another being like you, and silent approval seems to radiate from him. You wonder if you should go to him, thank him. Because, though again you have no way of knowing how you know, you have no doubt that this one made you what you are now.
Even as you wonder, you realize it is not yet time. You must prove yourself first. But how? The answer comes on the midnight breeze - a scent that galvanizes you. It is what you have been craving since you quickened in the grave. The one thing that can appease your hunger.
Blood.
You turn, head held high, and start to move, tracking that delicious scent, moving in quick, feral bursts from headstone to mausoleum to tree. There's no mistaking it. Your need for it makes you frantic, but nevertheless you move cautiously. An instinct that you do not question keeps you from charging headlong into the cemetery dark. There is danger here. You don't know what it is, but you don't question the knowledge. Though what animates you is not precisely life - there is no real term for what you are now, you exist in the borderlands, your body a clinically dead marionette, yet somehow inspirited - you aren't anxious to give it up.
You pause behind a tall marker, and suddenly you feel pain. It takes you by surprise; it's not the gnawing emptiness of the hunger, it's something new, a revulsion so intense that it's physical. Confused, you stagger back, then look up at the monument. It rises into the sky, its cruciform shape silhouetted against the full moon.
A cross. Your fear and hatred of it are so abrupt and intense that you can hardly bear to say the words in your mind.
You back away. No question about it, there is danger here. Though you feel strong, though your reflexes are quick and your senses acute, you are not invulnerable.
Best you keep this in mind.
The scent rises in your nostrils again, beckoning, heady. You follow it. Another breeze comes, from the north this time, and you suddenly know that it will snow soon.
And then you come around the corner of an ossuary and behold your prey.
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