Creatures of Forever (The Last Vampire #6)(2)
Author: Christopher Pike

He finishes his drink and stands. "Let's go," he barks.

Out on the street, he walks fast toward a car he never seems to find. I have to adopt a brisk pace to keep up with him. People move past us in the dark, the nameless faces of a humanity I have known forever. The summer air is warm.

"I have a car if you can't find yours," I finally offer.

He shrugs. "I just thought we'd take a walk first, get to know each other."

"Fine. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a plumber. What do you do?"

"I'm an artist."

He is amused. "Oh, yeah? Do you paint?"

"I sculpt. Statues."

He gives a wolfish grin. "Nudes?"

"Sometimes." It's so nice to get to know each other.

Yet there's something wrong, more than the obvi­ous. He's not at ease with me, and his discomfort goes beyond his thoughts of wanting to murder me. He fantasizes how my bright blue eyes will dim as my brain dies beneath his grip. Yet I am more than just another victim to him.

He is afraid of me.

Someone has told him something about me.

But who that someone is, I don't know. My concen­tration is divided between Seymour and my situation. Yet I don't know why I should worry about Seymour. Certainly Heidi is not going to harm him. I scanned the girl's mind for a few seconds when I met her and there was nothing in there but thoughts of drink and sex. No, I tell myself, Dan is all that matters. I wonder where he's leading me, who we'll meet on the other end. He makes a sharp left into a dark alleyway. Naturally, to my eyes, everything in the alley is perfectly clear.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"My place," he says.

"Can you walk to your place from here?"

"Yeah." He pauses and studies me out of the corner of his eye. Although he's striving to act cool, his breathing is rapid, his heart pounds. He definitely knows I am more than I seem, more dangerous than a cop with a gun. But he doesn't know I'm a vampire. There are no images in his mind of my drinking his blood. But the farther we walk, the more difficult his thoughts are to penetrate—another mystery. Yet I know he is worried what will happen with me in connection with another, how our meeting will go. This other, I sense, is also dangerous, in the same way he thinks I am.

The other is close. Waiting.

Are we going to meet another vampire?

There should be no other vampires, other than Seymour and myself.

I smile. "Do you live alone?"

"Yeah," he says, and his hands brush against his coat pocket. I realize he has a weapon there, and wonder why I didn't spot it before. The gun must be unusually small, I think. But when I sniff with my nose, I detect not even a trace of lead or gunpowder in the air, and I can smell a bullet from a quarter of a mile away. My questions pile one on topof the other, but I am far from ready to walk away from the encounter. There is a puzzle here—Imust solve it.

"I live with my brother," I say.

"The guy back at the bar?"

"Yeah."

"He doesn't look like your brother." There is a bite to his remark. For some reason, Seymour is still very much on this guy's mind. Why?

"We had different fathers," I say, and my own hand brushes against the knife I wear in my belt beneath my black leather coat. Nowadays, I can kill a man at better than a mile with my trusty blade. Even good old Eddie Fender, a psychopath if ever there was one, would be useless against my new and improved reflexes.

Dan snorts. "I never knew my father."

That is one truth in a string of lies.

There is a warehouse at the end of the block, a shabby affair built to house dirty equipment and sweaty workers. Using a key, he opens the door and we go inside. The warehouse is chock full of shelves of metal gear, the nuts and bolts of larger pieces of machinery. There is a pronounced smell of diesel fuel. The yellow lights, coated in grime, are few and far away. The shadows seem to shift as Dan turns toward me. If he reaches for his weapon, I will put a foot in his heart. Already, I think, I should kill him. Yet I want to know why he has brought me to this place, who the other is. Even though I reach out with my mind, I sense no one else in the building. He studies me in the poor light.

"Are you really an artist?" he asks. His curiosity is genuine, as is his continuing fear. He wants the other to arrive soon, so he can return to the streets.

"No," I say, "I lied."

My remark unsettles him. He thinks about his weapon—the small something in his coat pocket. He shifts uneasily.

"What are you then?" he asks.

"A vampire," I say.

He smiles, a lopsided affair. "No shit."

"Yeah. It's true." Still staring at him, I begin to move around him. He feels my eyes—Ilet the fire enter them, sparks of pressure. Sweat appears on his forehead and I continue. "I am a five-thousand-year-old vampire. And you are a murderer."

His upper lip twists. "What are you talking about?"

"You, Dan, your private occupation. Because I'm a vampire, I can read your mind. I know about the two girls you killed, how you strangled them and then ate a big red steak afterward. Killing makes you hungry—that's one of the reasons you do it. That's opposite of me. I kill to satisfy my hunger." I reach out and finger the sleeve of his shirt. "I'm thinking of killing you."

He brushes my hand away. Yet he doesn't go for his gun. Someone has warned him that could be fatal. "You're insane," he says angrily.

I laugh softly. "You don't mean that, Dan. Someone told you I was different so you're not completely surprised by what I say. I want to know about that someone. If you tell me now, tell me everything you know, I might let you live." Once more I reach out. This time I touch his left ear, but before he can swat my hand away, I pinch it. Rather hard, I think. He is in pain. "Talk," I say softly.

"Stop," he pleads, as I force him to bend over.

"Just a slight tug of my hand," I say, "and your ear will separate from your head. I am very strong. So talk to me, while you still can. Who is to meet me here?"

"I don't know." He squeals as I twist his ear. "I don't know!"

"Tell me what you do know."

He gasps for air. "She is just someone I know. She came to me after I killed the first girl. She said I could work for her. She gave me money. Please, you're hurting me. Let me go!"