Chapter #5The Vampire and the Snowman by: Seuzz   Previously: "Some Uncomfortable Facts" 
With a heavy, booted steps you trod through the forest. The dry twigs and leaves hiss softly, burning under the frost of your passage; the underbrush shrivels at the touch of the hem of your tattered mantle. You raise your hooded head as you top a small crest, and through a gap in the trees glimpse the surface of Lake Ontario, twinkling under the moonlight. For only a moment you raise your eyes to the waxing moon--hanging in the sky like a ball of ice--then turn to follow the bend of the hill.
Your destination looms over the trees: the long-abandoned State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It's like a vast, gaunt shadow. Even under the noon-time sun the dark stonework--unbroken by windows--grimly deflects the gaze; at night, the walls are an obsidian nightmare.
From the edge of the woods you stare at it until the shadows at its base retreat under your hard glare, revealing a man. He hunches, as though oppressed by the building he guards. You stand very still, a darker shadow against the darkness of the forest eaves, and let your shadow lengthen, like that of a gravestone, until it falls over him. Only when you've thus blinded him do you advance. He clutches himself as you draw closer, and looks around nervously, and shivers hard as your cold breath envelops him. An ethereal, invisible ice congeals on his shoulders and head, and under its crushing weight he sinks in a swoon at your feet.
You kneel beside him, and lay your right hand--the one sheathed in a glove of silvery mesh--upon his forehead. Moments later, his thoughts are yours. So is his form. Then you lay your left hand--the one sheathed in a mesh of a dark metal--upon him. The earth rises to swallow and cover him in a low mound. It is only an illusion, but it will hide him until he wakes in an hour's time.
And an hour is all you will need. They are waiting for you inside. Too bad for them they don't know who "you" are, or how you will be appearing to them. Your cloak and mantle resolve themselves into perfect imitations of Ben Shackelford's work jeans and denim jacket; your hood wraps about your face and vanishes, leaving Shackelford's visage behind. You similarly wrap your mind in his thoughts and persona. You feel his hunger for the lamia's blood, but it neither moves nor tempts you.
He had been waiting for Matt Medoff--the alias you used to travel out here, to this tiny town in upstate New York. He'd told you--the investigative journalist nosing around--that he knew something about the odd drug rumored to be circulating in the county, and had promised to show you what he knew.
You didn't have to steal his memories to see that it was a trap, which is why you ambushed him here instead of meeting him, as you'd promised. You reach into the illusory mound and pull out Shackelford's cell phone. "Medoff just called," you tell Bradley, who is inside the abandoned asylum. "Says he's running an hour late. I'm coming in to get warm."
"Stay out there and keep watch," he says.
"Fuck you. It's cold, and it's creepier out here than it is in there." You trot around to the side door, and go in.
You slam it hard behind you and shout: "Hey! Sean!" There's only one other door, and you throw your shadow over it at the sound of approaching footsteps. As you'd blinded Shackelford, so you blind Malley as he comes. He frowns at what seems an empty room, and turns around to tramp back into the main hallway. That's when you catch him at the side of the neck, then lay his unconscious form on the floor. Your clothes and face shift.
"Where's Ben?" Bradley grumbles as you come into the derelict office he and the others have rigged as a temporary headquarters. He shuffles a pack of cards.
"I sent him back out," you say. Davidson, sitting across from Bradley, snorts. "Listen, guys," you say, and lean forward to rest your hands on the back of theirs. But you say nothing more, for you've sent them slumping into their chairs.
So easy, you sigh to yourself as you straighten up. But there's still the lamia to deal with. You grip Bradley's limp hand and pull his thoughts into you. You blink, startled by what you find there. "The poor thing," you mutter to yourself.
* * * * *
It's in the operating theater, behind a heavy, makeshift curtain on the far wall. The flickering electric lights cast a dim, acrid light into the vast cavern. In Bradley's form you trudge across the floor to where he keeps it, and rip the curtain away, revealing a freshly laid brick wall. A withered arm sticks out of a hole in the brickwork; a catheter is shoved into it, and thin stream of black liquid slides up the tube and trickles into a plastic bag. It's the most potent, will-enslaving narcotic known to man: the blood of a vampire. Another tube from another bag carries a red stream into another hole: the blood of the last victim of Bradley's gang.
Leave it to the ingenious Bradley to turn a vampire into a milch cow.
You insert the crowbar into a crack and tear at the brickwork. Dust billows as bricks crack and fall. It's shoddy construction, and comes down quickly. And there, in the makeshift crypt, is the lamia.
They've bound it in heavy, silver chains, and it hangs there, limp and emaciated. Its skin is grey and hairless and mottled; its skull is a bare dome. The tube carrying human blood runs into its mouth, and you wince sympathetically at the way they've stapled the tube to its shriveled cheek to keep it in place.
It raises its head and opens its eyes. The thing is sickly from torture and exploitation, but it still has a magnetic power in its gaze: You shiver, and your disguise melts away, leaving you exposed in your cloak and mantle and hood. But the lamia's eyes betray neither fear nor horror or contempt. Only weariness. It murmurs something, and its head sags again.
"What did you say?" you croak.
It raises its head again. "A stake," it says. "Give me peace."
It's not what you expected of it, and you really ought to bring Rick out before doing anything else. But it seems the kindest and most proper ending.
You hunt about the wreckage of the asylum until you find a sharp stick. The chest of the lamia rises and falls shallowly as you put the point over its heart. The monster makes no motion. You drive the makeshift stake home.
It gasps a little, and chokes, and a thin foam bubbles over its lips. Then it goes limp, and crumbles into dust.
* * * * *
"So it was old man Bradley running things all along," Rick Bredon mutters sourly as he surveys the results of your mission. "Jinkies."
"He trapped it and hid it so it couldn't exercise any influence over the people he fed its blood too," you say. "But he controlled the supply, so he could control the victims. What will happen to them, now that they can't get any more?"
"Some will get the shakes real bad," Rick says. "Some'll just shake it off, now that the thing's dead. Some might kill themselves. Not really our problem, Frosty."
"I've asked you not to call me that," you say.
"Then cultivate a warmer persona," he says, and hunches up inside his heavy jacket.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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