Chapter Eight

While I was waiting, I began to feel about me in the darkness. The floor was smooth and dirty with collected grit. It had been closed for several decades, at least. I felt about me in the darkness, going slowly. If I cut myself, it could spell the end of the line. To my surprise, I felt the familiar, smooth, thick cloth of my medical coat. With bated breath, I patted it, feeling for my makeshift stake in the inner pocket. I exhaled in relief when my hand met with its solidness. I pulled the coat on, hugging myself, making it look like I was trying to get warm, and hiding the fact that I was reaching for the handle of the stake.

The last thing that I wanted to do was to have Mark focus his attention on me. Although I didn’t want to engage Mark in conversation, I also knew that I needed to get him off-guard. I needed to lull him into a false sense of security, so that I could find an opportunity to slip my makeshift stake in between his ribs. I was a doctor—familiar than most with anatomy. This should be something that I excelled at.

“So, who were you, like, originally?” I asked him. He faced me, frowning a bit. “I mean, you must have been someone important if such a powerful rogue vampire like your Maker turned you. Jared told me all about him and how great he was. He didn’t tell me much about you, though.” To my surprise, he answered.

“You assume wrong, Samantha. I was your average kid. I was the youngest of two brothers,” he said. “My older brother was a straight-A student, a star athlete, and then a decorated Marine. He died in Vietnam. My parents didn’t pay much attention to me before his death. But after, it was like they were ghosts. It was like I was a ghost.”

“That must have been hard,” I said, coaxing him.

“Indeed. They were the first that I killed…when I became this.” He smiled. “The terror in their eyes as they found that they had been harboring a monster, and the fear that permeated their blood made it sweet and succulent. And perfect Brian, dead.” He laughed as something occurred to me. “If only I had been able to kill him, too. Alas.”

“That’s why most of your victims were young men, isn’t it?” I said. “You feed off of young men who look like your brother because it’s like killing him.”

“You are so good at putting two and two together,” Mark said sarcastically. “Clever, Doctor.” He sighed heavily.

“My father owned this factory,” he said, waving his hand in the air. “He built it from the ground up, spending his entire life perfecting it…making it run like clockwork. He so desperately wanted my brother to follow in his footsteps after attending college on the G.I. Bill. Instead, it came to me. And I let it fall into ruin and disuse from the moment my father’s heart stopped beating.”

“My Maker showed me how to have power. Going rogue was the best thing to happen to me. And then Jared had to go and kill Gregor…bring him to some sort of justice. But that just freed me from the bonds of my Maker. Now that I have all of the power, I can ascend to the greatness for which I was meant.” He looked at me, and there was a strange gleam in his eye. “Now that I am the Undead, nothing can stop me.”

“Why would you want that?”

“And your life is working out so well, Samantha?” his voice was hushed, yet menacing. He was looking at me, his face in shadow, his head cocked to the side, as if he were making a study of me.

“I can’t complain,” I replied, shrugging. “I mean, my relationships don’t seem to work out, and then I do tend to be a little awkward in social situations, but you know, my career is working out really well, and I love my apartment.”

“And this is what you want? Always struggling, always rushing about to put other people back together?” It was like he was looking inside of me and finding something wanting. “Always tired, always the one in the relationship who gets left for someone else…someone with more time, someone more confident?”

“When you put it that way…” My voice came out sounding hurt, as though stung by this remark. I steeled myself: I wasn’t about to let him get to me. I needed to survive this. I needed to stay on point.

“Have you ever thought about what it would mean to put all of that aside?” he was walking closer to me, kneeling down so that we were face-to-face. I could smell his breath; it reeked of blood. I wondered that I had never smelled it before. “What if you could have power, and wealth?” He caressed my cheek with his frozen hand. “What if you could have beauty that would last for eternity?” He paused, exhaling in a rush of frozen air, reminiscent of a refrigerator door opening. I knew that this was not yet my moment. I let him go on and let him get comfortable within my reach.

“You know, Samantha,” he said. “One of the reasons why I talk to you is because I really do find you attractive. Your pale, creamy skin, hair blonde like corn silk, eyes that would look like cold stars when I take all of the warmth out of you.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of being so cold.

“You would taste…incredibly sweet.” His voice was seductive. I tried to keep my breathing calm, and to not move a muscle, my hand gripping the stake in my jacket, but I was shaking horribly from tension and fear. From Mark’s undisguised pleasure as he smiled, cruelly stroking my cheek, and then my neck, right along my carotid artery, I could tell that he was savoring my poorly disguised fear. I was his plaything.

He leaned back, pulling out his phone, and glancing at it, his pale skin blue in its light. He sighed as he checked the time.

“We still have some time yet,” he said, placing his phone back into his pocket before he lunged at me, like a snake striking at its prey. He grabbed me by the neck, standing and lifting me to him in the cruel mockery of a kiss, his ice cold lips at mine. His razor-sharp fangs cut my lip as he forced his tongue inside of my mouth. I knew—it was time.

In a single movement, I pulled the stake from my coat pocket, shoving it as best as I could up and in between his ribs and in the direction of his heart. He screamed in surprise and threw me against the wall, where I hit, sliding down to the floor in a daze. He looked down at the stake, sticking out from beneath his sternum. With a sinking feeling, I realized that I had missed his heart.

He pulled it from his chest, and, snarling, leaped at me with lightning speed.