There was history here. I could feel it. The place had probably belonged to some pioneer family scraping by. Nothing here would speak to the mystery I wanted to solve.
Standing back, hands on hips, Cormac regarded the remains of the building. “Vampires would have dug down. Built themselves a cellar, out of the sun. The structure would have just been there to protect the entrance. Anything else was most likely buried. We won’t find anything unless we dig.”
Digging would involve a lot more time and equipment, not to mention permits from the regional park service that owned the land and the involvement of any archaeology departments interested in mid-nineteenth-century settlements. I hadn’t really expected to find more than this. But the answers felt close, as if I could read them in a book if I could only find the right page.
“Look at this,” Ben said. He’d parted a section of grass and scraped away a layer of dirt just outside the burned foundation to reveal a slender length of wood, blackened but not burned through like the rest. Giving a yank, he pulled it free of the dirt. About a foot long and a couple of inches in diameter, it tapered to a dull point.
“Let me see that,” Cormac said, reaching. Ben handed it to him.
Cormac ran his hand along the length of the aged wood, then hefted it as if testing its weight.
“It’s a killing stake.” He gripped the end of it and made a quick stabbing motion. Kind of like you’d do to stab a vampire.
“How do you know?” Ben said. “It may have marked out a garden or held down a tarp.”
Cormac tossed Ben the stake, giving him a chance to heft its weight and test its peculiar suitability for stabbing. “It’s a nonnative hardwood. Somebody carved it and brought it here for a reason.”
“I think we’re letting our imaginations get away from us,” Ben said.
“You could say that about this whole trip,” Cormac answered.
I scowled. “I wish we had a metal detector.”
“Maybe see if we can find some silver bullets?” Ben said.
Wouldn’t that be comforting?
We walked over the immediate area, studying the ground for whatever else we might happen to stumble over. We found a few more burned timbers. Everything was old, weathered smooth, and I didn’t know enough to be able to guess the age of the buildings that had once stood here.
We wouldn’t be able to stay out here much longer; the sun was below the horizon now, and the sky had turned a deep twilight blue. The first stars were flickering. We’d only stayed out this late because Ben and my werewolf eyes hardly noticed the change in light. Cormac had pulled a penlight out of a pocket.
I was about to call off the hunt when Ben stopped, head cocked as if listening.
“Assuming this was a vampire lair,” he said, “and that it really was burned down by Wyatt Earp, or whoever, a century ago—should I be able to still smell vampire here?”
I took in a slow breath, nostrils flaring to scent what he’d noticed. Because no—smells on the landscape faded, washed away, scoured by wind in a matter of weeks. But he was right, a touch of cold lingered on the earth here. It wasn’t ice, it wasn’t rot, but a distinctive, living cold.
“It’s recent,” I whispered.
The three of us were statues, waiting for a sign.
A scraping noise pattered against the earth about ten yards away. It might have been a nocturnal rodent emerging from its den. It didn’t matter—Ben and I moved next to each other, backs together in a defensive posture.
The undead smell of vampire grew stronger.
“I don’t believe it,” Ben muttered. I shushed him and looked for Cormac, who stood calmly, hands at his sides.
The earth before us erupted, a fountain of dirt spraying as something forced its way up from underground. A trapdoor, covered with earth, had hidden a cellar. A gray-skinned being emerged, hissing, lips pulled back to show long fangs.
It had been human. It had the shape—torso, thin legs meant to walk upright, slender arms, a hairless head and face with all the right details. But it had shriveled, mutated—drying flesh pulled taut over bones, every knobby joint visible. Under a hanging, threadbare shirt that had rotted away to clinging fibers, the shape of a rib cage stood out, and the concave belly couldn’t possibly have held organs. The teeth were yellow, and the eyes that stared at us were clouded, milky. Shredded trousers were even worse off than the shirt.
It moved like a sprinter, straight toward us.
I braced and shouted, hoping to startle it into stopping its charge. Ben was beside me, hands clenched into the shape of claws, teeth bared.
A light flared, like a camera flash that didn’t fade, searing into my eyes. Ducking, I put up my arms to block the light, and Ben hunched over with me for protection. The creature stopped, cowering on the ground before us, sheltering under its raised arms, pale eyes squinting against the onslaught.
Cormac held the source of light in his hand, raised above his head. It wasn’t the penlight—no penlight was this strong, this pervasive. Instead, he held some kind of stone—something magical. My vision adjusted to the glaring white light. The creature’s didn’t. It continued writhing, mewling, cowering away from an enemy that was everywhere. This gave us a chance to study it.
“That’s not a vampire,” Ben said. “It can’t be.”
The pair of slender fangs, visible when the being bared its teeth at us, said that it was. But I’d never seen anything like this. All the elegance, the arrogance I associated with long-lived vampires was gone. All the humanity was gone, stripped down to pure, undying hunger. A dry, graying tongue worked behind its teeth; the column of its throat trembled under its skin.
It—He? She? I couldn’t
