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racing forward, raving, cackling.
Tori! What are you doing?! Abraham s voice was weak. Confused. Its power
was lost, and this more than anything filled Two with hope. Tori was at her peak,
energized by rage and hatred, and the desire to protect her friend. Now was the time, yet
Two could not get a clear shot with the machete without hurting the girl.
Tori, move! You have to move!
Too late. Abraham shoved forward, and threw Tori from him. The vampire girl
collided with Two, knocked her backward, knocked the machete from her hand. Abraham
advanced now, still fast, even after the heroin. Tori got in his way, was knocked aside,
and landed hard. Two could hear the crack of her head on rock from six feet away, like
ice snapping on a lake in midwinter. Two fell to her knees, scrabbling at the ground.
Reaching, searching, her eyes never leaving Abraham s advancing form. She felt
the machete s handle, clasped it, and brought it up in a last, desperate arc. She swung the
heavy blade with all of her strength, screaming prayers in a nonsense language to an
indistinct God. Prayers for speed. Prayers for strength. Prayers that it was not too late.
The blade caught Abraham just below the chin, carving into the skin of his neck.
For Two, it was like chopping at stone. She felt pain lance through her arm as muscles
separated, tore, gave out, but did not draw back, did not stop her swing. Abraham s head
separated from his body, flew up and backward into the air, hit the ground rolling, and
came to a stop by Tori s inert form.
Two rolled away from the headless trunk, which stood for a moment as if welded
to the ground. Great black jets sprayed forth from the ragged stump of neck, and the
hands clutched at its sides as if searching still to tear Two apart. Then at last like Goliath
it fell, borne down by its own weight, and lay still upon the ground. Abraham, the dark
god, elder vampire of the new world, lay dead.
* * *
Blackness overtook Two, and she lay on her back for some time, covered in filth
and blood, heedless of the slush that piled around her. Gasping, sobbing, calling out to
Theroen, Two lay on the cold ground until she at last realized that Theroen wasn t
coming, and dragged herself to a sitting position.
Tori.
She made her way to Tori s body and bent down, fearing the worst. To her relief,
Tori s body was already healing, the flow of blood from the wound on the forehead
slowing. She was breathing in deep, slow, steady breaths. Two shook her gently, and Tori
opened her eyes. She sat up, groggy, and looked at Two, then at the head on the ground,
and broke into tears. Two held her tightly, kissing her face, her hair, unable to believe
they had both survived it.
Oh, Tori. Oh, sweetheart. We did it. He s dead. Tori, he s dead!
They took the head back with them to the house. Two wanted it nowhere near the
body. She knew that vampires possessed formidable powers of regeneration, and if
someone had told her that Abraham s head could somehow reattach itself to his body, she
would not have doubted them.
From the forest emerged two staggering forms, making their way slowly toward
the mansion, toward warmth. Two s head was throbbing, though she couldn t remember
hitting it on anything. Her right arm felt as if on fire, every muscle torn and pulled. Tori
leaned against her, still dizzy and sick from the blow to the head. Neither woman was
capable of mustering more strength than was necessary to keep their limbs moving.
The side door was locked, and so they made their way toward the front. Two
didn t know what she would do if that door wouldn t open. Break a window, perhaps. It
didn t matter. They needed to get inside. The mansion was hope where no hope had been.
It was warmth. Survival. Two wondered if she was crying. Her face was too numb from
cold to tell.
The front door opened with ease, swinging wide, opening on the rooms in which
she had spent the past two months. Two made a choked, sobbing noise of gratitude and
stumbled inside, slamming the door behind her. She eased Tori down onto the plush
oriental carpet, and staggered to the entrance to the basement. She threw Abraham s head
down the stairs, then bolted the heavy oak door at their top.
The pain in her head and arm were making her dizzy. Two stumbled forward into
the first room she could see. The media room. Melissa s blood still stained the carpet, and
Two looked away. She struggled to one of the couches, fell down upon it, and let black
unconsciousness take her.
* * *
She woke in the early morning, the sunlight still painful on her skin, and shifted
position to a couch that lay in the shadows. Here she slept the rest of the day, and into the
next evening. When at last she came out of her slumber, she found Tori curled up next to
her. Her head still ached, but only slightly. Her arm was better, though still painful to
move. Two felt very human indeed, and wondered if her regression to that form had been
hastened as she had healed.
She sat up, looking around, trying to determine what hour of the day it was. The
media room s windows were dark. Two could see smears of dirt in the hallway, and
realized that during the day, Tori had dragged herself into the front closet.
Smart girl, Two said. She turned on one of the televisions. Sights and sounds
flashed by, news reports on things she didn t care about. She flipped channels and found
a cable access station broadcasting the time and date.
Near midnight, mid-December. It would be Christmas soon, the television
informed her. Had she done her shopping? To Two it felt like she had lived ten years in
the course of the past two months. She turned off the TV and stood on shaky legs. She
was starving, but not for blood. What she really wanted was a cheeseburger. This
realization both amused and saddened her.
Two made her way upstairs into the room she had shared with Theroen. Her
clothes were still there, in closet and dressers. Bathroom supplies, books of poetry, it was
as if she had never left. Two thought of Theroen, lying next to her on the bed, and the
ache in her heart leapt to the forefront.
I could kill you a thousand times, Abraham, and we d never be even. You took
everything I had.
Two went to take a shower.
* * *
They lived at the mansion for six weeks, and in that time Tori began to show
definite signs of returning to humanity. Christmas came and went, the new year began.
Two and Tori healed. As her mind changed, Tori began to behave in new ways. She
mimicked sounds, and was beginning to understand simple questions that Two asked.
She was still strong. Still fast. Two wondered if the changes that vampirism had
made to the girl s physiology would every truly leave. She wondered if Tori would ever
fully regain her mind. She didn t know.
There were only two moments of unpleasantness left for Two during her stay at
the mansion. The first occurred early: the burning of Abraham s remains. Two had taken
care of the head first, out in the yard, dousing it with gasoline and covering it with
kindling. She d taken the machete to the skull, blackened and cracked by the flames, and
scattered the pieces around the grounds. She d repeated the process with the body. If
Abraham could somehow heal himself now, then it was beyond her power to do anything
more about it.
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