Jonatha said, “Mike, I don’t know you, but from what I’m hearing it sounds like you’ve certainly taken a side in all this. You may have the worst heritage anyone’s ever heard of, but you’re here with us. You’re not with Vic.”
He didn’t meet her eyes, but his cheeks colored. “I guess.”
“The dhampyr aren’t usually fighters,” she said, changing tack. “They’re more like witch-sniffers—beings that can sense evil and are dedicated to revealing it. Among the Gypsies the dhampyr usually goes from town to town and offers his services to detect and destroy vampires or other evil. Not in single combat or anything…it, um, involves some kind of ritual dance and the use of special charms, and so on.”
“Oh brother,” Weinstock said, rolling his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Mike said, “I don’t see myself breaking into a dance number any time soon.”
“But there’s a downside to being a dhampyr,” Jonatha said gravely. “Did the Bone Man tell you that?”
Mike gazed at her for a long time before nodding. “Yeah, he told me that.”
“Told you what?” Weinstock asked.
Jonatha cleared her throat. “Well, in folklore, the dhampyr is the antithesis of a vampire. Where a vampire is evil, the dhampyr is not; where a vampire preys on humans, the dhampyr preys on supernatural creatures; and, where the vampire is immortal…the dhampyr is not. In fact, the dhampyr generally only lives into his early twenties.”
“What happens?” Val asked, leaning forward. “Is it a matter of a high mortality rate for someone so young fighting those kinds of odds? Because you’re going to have a hell of a lot of backup here if it comes to a fight.”
Jonatha shook her head. “No…it’s worse than that. Beginning with late puberty the dhampyr’s skeleton begins a process of degeneration. It…um…”
“What she’s trying to say,” Mike said, “is that my skeleton is going to turn to jelly by the time I’m in my mid-twenties. It’ll stop supporting my organs, and eventually I’m just going to collapse into a big mooshy mass and die.”
“Holy…God!” Newton said.
Val reached out and put her hand on Mike’s arm and he shied away.
“I’m so sorry, kid,” Jonatha said softly. “Maybe that part of the story’s just bullshit. Maybe the different biology here…Mayor Wolfe and all…it might make things different.”
“Yeah,” Mike said brightly, “and maybe Santa will come and sprinkle elf-dust on me and make everything all better.”
“Well don’t forget you’re in a hospital and this is the twenty-first century, not fifteenth-century Romania.” Weinstock said, reaching out with his good arm and patting Mike’s shoulder. “I’ll bet there’s a whole we can do, so let’s not dig a hole quite yet.”
Mike’s eyes searched the doctor’s face, then he nodded.
“Is there more?” Newton asked.
“Sure,” Mike said softly, “I haven’t even gotten to the part where I died, yet.”
(2)
The crucified man hung there in the shadows and felt his life run out of him. He could barely feel his limbs; his hands and feet were distant countries from which he received little communication. Most of the time he was not conscious, lost in blackness but still aware of his own body, of the tether of pain that still held him to the world. Sometimes he could find his way into the light, but he had to blink away tears of blood just to catch a brief glimpse of the weak gray daylight. He coveted those momentary glimpses because he was sure they were the last ones he would ever have.
His head felt heavy. He wanted to lay it down, let his chin fall on his chest, let his neck rest from carrying that improbably heavy burden, but he couldn’t. Something burned in the back of his head and he felt as if that burning pinpoint kept his head from falling forward. There were other burning spots as well, little fires in his hands, along his sides, down one leg, in the heel of his other, twisted leg. The skin around each point of fire was warm, too, but the warmth was wet and ran in long lines down his limbs.
When he was up in the light he could smell things that didn’t make sense, a cacophony of odors. Distantly he thought that they should make sense, but it was so hard to think with that constant burning. He struggled to separate the smells. There were four of them, he thought. One smell was sweet and thick and reminded him of freshly sheared copper. Another smelled like his mother’s kitchen and her spicy food, of Sunday dinners with Uncle Tony and the pot of gravy always simmering on the stove. He could remember that kitchen to the tiniest detail, though he could not, for the life of him, remember his own name, or how he came to be there. Or where he was. Or anything useful.
His thoughts drifted back to the smells. The third smell was an outhouse stink of urine and sweat, and he knew that those smells came from him. He wondered if he had made a mess of himself; he wondered if he should care. The last of the smells was an aroma from his teenage days long ago. How long ago? He wasn’t sure. A long time? Yesterday? He could not be sure, but he knew that smell was the gasoline stink of cars and grease and filling stations. The four smells were all around him, covering him, clogging his nose, filling the air that drifted past his bloodied nose and mouth and eyes.
He tried to move, and from a thousand miles away he felt the fingers of one hand twitch. Was it his right hand? He wasn’t sure. Just fingers, moving.
He coughed once. A short, sharp cough choked with bloody phlegm, and the brief convulsion of the cough ignited each of those burning points into white-hot searing suns that fried his nerve endings. He wanted to scream, to run away from the burning points of agony, but he could not throw his head back to utter the shriek that welled in him; instead his jaw dropped down and a stuttering, gagging growl bubbled out of the back of his throat.
Gradually, gradually, the intense flare of pain subsided, the fires banking back down to the burning points of heat. Then he coughed again, unexpectedly, sharply, a deeper cough that knotted his guts as if he’d just been punched. He doubled forward and the burning pain in the back of his head flared again, but the resistance was immediately gone. As his heavy head sagged forward, his shoulders followed, igniting more of the burning spots again, but with each flare more of his body became unstuck. He crumpled forward and he could see the ground reaching up toward him. He could see the puddle of gasoline and blood and urine that pooled around his shoes. He toppled forward, finally pulling free of the nails that had held him to the trapdoor.
Frank Ferro collapsed onto the porch of Griswold’s house.
The punctured sprayer leaked high octane down his sides and onto the floor, and blood pumped sluggishly from twenty-six deep punctures in his body. The hole in the back of his head glistened red and there were tiny flecks of bone and brain tissue mingled in with the flowing blood.
One pierced hand flopped out, scrabbling feebly toward the light. He tried to find his feet, tried to recall how they worked, and after long minutes of trying managed to kick weakly backward against the door. He managed to shove himself six inches forward, six inches farther toward the yard. He tried again, and this time his fingers closed around a thick piece of debris from the fallen porch. He pulled with all his strength and slid another five inches forward. He coughed again and blood began streaming from his nose. The light flickered off and on and the point of burning pain in the back of his head became white hot again.
Ferro laid his face down on the floor and tried to remember how to pray. He knew he should be able to remember. But it was so hard to think.