But he looks too shocked to take advantage of my poor aim. He says, “But, I’m…”
“Immortal?” I ask. My words sound all mushy. “But not invincible.”
I take careful aim this time, which is easy enough to do, as Bob’s just standing there with a stupid look on his face. My vision’s getting fuzzy. Feels a little like being drunk. But I can shoot okay when I’m drunk.
I manage to put one between his eyes. This does nothing to alter his expression, but it does seem to have a remarkable effect on the rest of his body. He collapses.
That finished, I drop my own gun and sag back onto my dislocated shoulder, which just about kicks me over my pain threshold. I’m thinking death right about now wouldn’t be so bad. It’d certainly hurt less. And then I black out.
* * *
When I wake up again, I’m alone in the back of one of the Humvees, my legs extended along the back seat and my head cushioned by a rolled-up shirt. Checking the rest of me, I find my arm to be in a sling and my side bandaged. I wonder how long I’ve been out.
“Adam,” a voice says. This is the sound that woke me up. I heard somebody calling my name.
I look around. “Clara?”
“No, not Clara.”
It’s Eve. She’s standing just outside the truck. The top is down, making her easy enough to spot. I don’t know how I missed seeing her immediately. Just to be sure, I blink a bunch of times. Still there.
“Oh,” I say. “H’lo.” I’m fairly groggy and there is a decent chance I’m speaking to a hallucination. I go with it anyway. Sometimes hallucinations have interesting things to say.
“I handled this badly,” Eve admits. “I forget sometimes how dangerous the world is for… for other people. For you.”
“You’re not like me, are you?” I say. “I always thought you were, but you’re something else.”
“I am older. That’s all.”
“So, that whole vanishing thing you did earlier… you’re saying I’m going to figure that out eventually?”
Eve smiles. “You will perhaps need to survive a third again as long first. But, yes.” She glances over her shoulder. Is someone coming?
“You and I, we are owed a long conversation”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. Especially true if nobody shows up to get behind the wheel of the Humvee.
“No,” she agrees. “But now is not that time.”
“You’re the most annoying hallucination I’ve ever had, you know that?”
She grins.
“Why is now not the time?”
“Because I’m not certain I am ready to forgive you yet, Urrr.”
What?
“I don’t… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know that. One day you will remember. And then you can find me, and we will talk.”
“Something I did to you?”
Eve smiles again. She has a fantastic smile. “When you remember, then you will understand.”
She turns to go.
“Wait!” I say. She hesitates. “Okay, say I figure out what the hell you’re talking about. This is the first time I’ve spoken to you after ten millennia of trying. I don’t think I can wait that long again.”
She stares at me gravely. “This world we share is getting much too small. If you want to find me again, it will not be that difficult. Provided I want you to. And you are wrong. This isn’t the first time we’ve spoken.”
I hear the sound of footsteps in sand, up near the head of the car.
“Be well,” Eve says. Then she turns and walks out of view.
“Wait!” I call out uselessly.
“What is it, Adam?” It’s Clara talking, from the driver’s side door. “Is something wrong?”
“Eve. Stop her.”
“What?” She looks around. “There isn’t anybody else here.”
“You don’t… no, no of course there isn’t.”
“Must have been a nasty hit you took to the head,” she says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “That must be it.”
Epilogue
With a full tank of gas, a map, compass, and a bag of mushrooms for Iza, we drive out of the compound. Our destination is the nearest town, which according to the map, is a good three hours away.
We remain largely silent for the first hour of the trip, all except for Iza, who’s a louder eater than you might expect.
It turns out the reason Iza had been absent for most of the night’s proceedings, was that I had not been quite as clear in my instructions as I’d thought. What I had told her to do after unlocking the doors was to fly off and locate the nearest idle car, then find Clara and bring her to it, and finally to find me and Eve and lead us to Clara. Thus, as soon as I was done I’d head in the proper direction, rather than stumble about a very large area with a killer vampire and possibly a very angry armed security force to worry about. The problem was that Iza didn’t know what a car was, or where to locate one.
You’d think a pixie that lived in Boston at one time would be fully aware of the concept of an automobile. But, after a few days of patient explanation, it became clear that she thought of cars as simply another type of animal, meaning there was a pretty good chance that when the time came she would end up leading me directly to a stray dog instead. So I had to provide her with an extremely detailed description. So detailed, she bypassed a number of perfectly viable vehicular options because a few of the particulars were a little bit off.
But when she finally did spot what she was sent to find, she raced back and arrived just about the same time I tried to fly from a second story window. She explained that she would have told me right then about the car she’d found, but it looked like I was busy.
As to what happened after I passed out, Clara filled in much of the details.
When Bob Grindel fired his gun right next to Clara’s temple, she lost her hearing for a good minute or two, and thus remained on the ground covering her head for a while, hoping things were turning out okay. When she finally peeked out she saw me unconscious on the ground with Eloise kneeling over me. Given what she knew about Eloise, she assumed the worst. But when Eloise said, “He has fainted,” Clara understood well enough to not panic completely.
A somewhat awkward conversation followed, during which Clara managed to convey the need to get me to the vehicle Iza had come to tell us about. This must have been a treat to listen to. Clara with her rudimentary boarding school French, translating directions from a pixie who is barely fluent in English, to Eloise and her fourteenth century peasant version of the French language. I wish I’d been awake for it.
But Clara got the point across all right. And, once I was in the car, she went to the infirmary to get what she needed for my wounds, patching me up as well as she knew how.
I spoke with Eloise before we left, giving her a quick review of what country she was in and why she was here. I also asked her if she remembered what she’d done after Iza had opened the door for her. Much like my old friend Bordick, she had only vague memories of what had transpired, but she did recall having an active interest in killing more or less anything she could hear breathing. She was moderately certain she’d succeeded. So, the good news was, we probably weren’t going to run into anybody on our way out. Bad news? As Clara said, there were at least fifty people in the camp at the beginning of the night. I only felt bad about this once I saw the carnage myself as we drove out of camp. It looked like Gettysburg, only with a more thorough appreciation of the art of dismemberment.
Eloise ultimately decided it might be fun to explore America rather than tag along with us, and I was in no position to stop her. Clara looked relieved. Can’t say I blame her.
I did ask how Eloise was going to avoid the sun while in the middle of a desert.