Vampire by Half:

The Legend of Tallah-Ahn-Ri

Part IV:  The Dark Hunter

After nearly two years away I am happily apprehensive to announce that I am writing again.  Please let me know if you enjoyed the story.  NCAnderson

Tallah's Favorite Gypsy Guitar

The woman walked down the steps of the parapet that followed the line of the great wall towards the tower. All at once she was aware of the wild, rolling surroundings, the beautiful stonework, and of the being directing her from behind. She was walking in daylight without her weapons or even her dark glasses, her arms drawn up behind her back, fists clenched. And she was afraid. Very, very afraid.

    This was no ordinary woman, but Tallah-Ahn-Ri, Half-Vampire. This place she knew was Hell and she was damned.
    The voice came from behind her, "All the years that you have been here are but days in the term of your sentence. It will go on forever and there are no second chances for you..."

     "No," she whispered.  "Please...  Is there nothing I can do?"

    Then she was on a bare, scrubby hillside in the middle of the wilderness crouching down, looking at the ground.  "If I came to you on my knees would you have me?"  Looking forward she saw a thick, rough wood post planted in the dirt at the top of the hill.  She crawled forward to place her hands on the splintering wood.  There was a man crucified there, his ruined body twisted in torment, alone and abandoned, a crown of thorns twisted upon his head. 

     "Is there no place for me?" she begged the silent figure.  "Do not forget me!"  Weeping she laid her forehead upon the wood at his feet.  "Please..." 

     Blood came pouring down upon her, bathing her face and hands.  She screamed.

Leaping out of bed Tallah-Ahn-Ri landed on her feet and then crumpled to her knees, arms wrapped tightly around herself, panting in fear.  "Oh, God!  Oh, God!"  She was alone in the dark, beside herself with grief.  "No..."

Jerry sat alone by the fire in the darkness, bent intently over a book with a faded leather cover in his hands.  It was his grandmother’s old copy of the New Testament, one of the few things that he had brought with him from his home so many years ago.  It brought him comfort.

     At first he wasn’t aware that anybody else was in the room with him.  A dark figure settled over his shoulder and remained quietly looking down at the book in his lap. 

     “Do you think…”

     The sudden voice at his ear made him jump. 

     “Do you think that there is room in there for me?”

     The seriousness of her voice kept him from replying at once.  He turned back and looked at her face, at the grave and solemn expression, and said nothing.

     “If I came to God on my hands and knees would he take me?”

     Finally Jerry answered; frightened by the bare fragility he sensed there he had not the heart to lie.  “I don’t know.”

    She turned away from him and faded back into the darkness.

In the months that had passed since her injury Tallah-Ahn-Ri had begun to dream. She thought that she always had but she was starting to remember her dreams and not all of them were gentle. She had brought Jerry back to New Venice and made arrangements for him to stay with one of the families there. He had sunk too deeply into her dark world where hope and salvation become a dim memory. In this house lived a young widow and her children. Her husband had been killed in the fighting and she needed someone to help her out. Tallah watched him working on the house, playing with the kids. She was very fond of him, yet she knew that he had to return to the world of the living or else end up in an isolated room somewhere, a gun in his mouth. This contact with his own kind was a good thing. Recently she had noticed that he was no longer sleeping in the spare bedroom. It was time for her to move on.
        She made her early evening rounds on foot, making sure that certain people knew that she was departing, stopping at the General Store to leave a forwarding address. The town doctor who had sewn her up was there.
    “Let me see your scar.” He was a good doctor, making due with what they had on hand he had saved her life. Carefully he probed her belly. “No pulling or tearing?”
    “Only when I sneeze.”
    He glanced up at her over the rims of his glasses and she could tell that he didn’t approve of her sense of humor. The truth was that she felt things pull loose every time she worked out and it hurt, sometimes a lot.
    “Bleeding?”
    “No.” She looked away. “A little.”
    He let her tuck her shirt back into the top of her jeans. “I can’t tell you how close you came, young lady. You have to take care of that until it’s fully healed.”
    Tallah pulled a face. Most mortals forgot just how old she really was. “I will. But I can’t let myself get soft. Need to keep my strength and reflexes up.”
    “Check with me when you get back.”
    “I will. Do me a favor?”
    “That depends.”
    “Jerry’s staying here with Melissa and her kids.”
    “And you want me to keep an eye on him.”
    “I want him to live. I’ve lost too many friends lately.”
    “Does he know you’re going?”
    Tallah pulled her leather jacket on and zipped the flaps up. “No, and I don’t want him to follow me either.”
    “I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Thanks.” She paused and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for everything.”


 

    She made her way out to her bike and noticed a figure loitering in the shadow, outside of the streetlight. This was no vampire.
    “Deanna.”
    “Hey Tallah.” The girl stepped out of her hiding place. She was about seventeen, wore a beat-up denim jacket and red streaks in her brown hair. Tallah knew that she was revving up under the urge to leave her small town existence, to separate herself from her tribe. That was trouble.
    She watched awkwardly as the dark-haired woman ran a quick systems check on the bike and stowed her gear in her saddle bags. Tallah knew what was coming. “What’cha doin’ out here De?”
    “Waiting…”
    “For a ride out of town?”
    “Maybe.”
    “And you think I’ll take you?”
    “You’re the only ride out tonight.”
    “You don’t even know where I’m going. Maybe I won’t come back.”
    “Anywhere would be better than here.”
    Tallah eyed her warily. The clubs were full of girls like her – young and restless, young and stupid, young and dead. “No helmet.”
    Deanna walked back to the sidewalk where she had been waiting and picked up an old helmet and a duffel bag off of the ground. “One ahead of ya’.”
    Tallah swung her leg over the leather seat. “You’re going to be trouble for me one way or another, aren’t you?” She hung her head down for a moment. The last thing she needed right now was to baby-sit a truant teenager. But on the other hand someone would have to go hunt this girl down as soon as she disappeared.

    “OK - climb on board.”
    They headed out to Tallah’s lair, the place that she had been brought after she was shot. Some of the town girls had been there to help take care of her. It was a series of old wartime storehouses dug deep into the side of a mountain – hard to find, easy to defend. Tallah didn’t go there often but it was as close as she had to a permanent residence.
    “I remember this place.” Deanna swung off the back as Tallah parked the bike. “s’kind’a cool…”
    Tallah grabbed her shoulder from behind with a bone-crushing grip that made the girl cry out. “As long as you’re here you follow these rules. One – that door stays locked. No one in, no one out. Two - you stay inside until I say that you can leave, and that’s not unless I’m dead. Three - don’t touch my stuff. If you can’t follow those rules I’ll put you out and you’re a long way from nowhere. Understood?”
    The girl nodded and rubbed her shoulder. Tallah had meant to hurt her, meant to drive the impression home. Any violation of those rules meant the lair would be open to the outside world. They went downstairs to the main rooms. Tallah pointed to a low couch next to the wall. “You can sleep off the day there. Don’t wake me up and don’t touch me while I’m asleep.”
    “’K…” The girl set down her bag and watched Tallah rummage around in the dusty piles of junk lying around the room. She had heard about lairs but had never seen one before she came here. “I’ll need a blanket.”
    Tallah wanted this to be an unpleasant experience for her. She shook out an old wool throw and tossed it onto the couch.
    “Thanks…” The girl spread it over her legs. “Where’d you get all this stuff anyway?”
    Tallah stopped what she was doing and looked around. “Heck if I know. Don’t even remember what half of it is.”
    “Then why do you keep it?”
    Tallah turned and looked at the child. She was going to be difficult. What was she thinking, bringing her here? She walked over and took the girl’s face in her hands. “I’m going to sleep now and you’re going to be quiet. OK?”
    The girl nodded.
    “That’s good, because I’m not myself when I wake up unexpectedly.”
    Tallah slept the day off while Deanna tossed and turned restlessly. She was beginning to wonder why she had asked to come. She hadn’t remembered Tallah being so rough, but then she didn’t really know her, had only been close to her after she was hurt. After awhile she had to get up. Taking her small flashlight she walked softly across the room. Tallah had a bed of sorts in the middle of the darkened room. She was lying on her back and had pulled off her shroud. Deanna looked down at her. The half-vampire was asleep, but her eyelids were parted and her teeth had emerged.
    “Dare cervices…” Tallah whispered in her sleep. Deanna moved back and did not come near for the rest of the day.


 

At nightfall Tallah awoke to the sound of something stirring in the room. She froze and lay quietly for a few moments while she tried to identify the sound. Rats? She hated rats, they chewed her gear while she slept. No, she had taken care of that problem. Jerry? Rebel? No, they weren’t here. Something crunched near her.
    Tallah went straight up in the air, twisted catlike and came down on the four points of her toes and fingers. She almost sprang to attack when she came face-to-face with a very startled girl. Deanna was sitting a few feet away on the low couch holding a half-empty bag of chips in her hand. She was frozen in mid-bite, her eyes wide on Tallah.
    Tallah crouched back and laughed. The look on the girl’s face was worth the ache she felt in her midsection. “You look like you’re ready to wet your jeans.”
    Deanna tilted the bag towards her. “Chip?”
    Tallah shook her head. “Can’t. Haven’t in ages.”
    “You can’t eat at all?”
    Tallah reached for her boots. “Can’t taste it. Wouldn’t hurt me, like chewing cardboard.” She stopped talking and sniffed. “What’s that?”
    Deanna looked around. “What?”
    Tallah dropped her boot and prowled towards the girl who looked very uncomfortable. “That smell. What is it?”
    Deanna dropped the bag and scooted quickly towards the far end of the couch and Tallah went headfirst into her duffel bag. “What's in here?”
    Deanna had brought a pile of assorted snack food with her, knowing that she might not get to eat much on the way. Tallah was now rummaging through this with uncharacteristic interest. “You can have anything you want in there…”
    Tallah pulled a large bar of foil wrapped chocolate out with a look of ecstatic triumph. She sank down on the floor with her back to the couch. “Oh, man!…”
    “Chocolate?” The girl asked. “You like chocolate?”
    “I can taste chocolate,” Tallah replied as she unwrapped the foil and inhaled a long, deep breath. “I can smell chocolate!”
    “Fine, have all of it. I would’ve brought more had I known.” She watched in fascination as the half-vampire indulged with a look that could only be compared to a heroine user getting a fix.
    “Mmmmmmm…” Tallah lay back with her eyes closed and licked her fingers. “I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve had chocolate.”
    “You know, you can get that sometimes at the General Store.”
    “I know, but it’s too much like a narcotic to me. I’d spend too much time pursuing it, take my edge off.”
    “I can see that.”
    After a while she got up and pulled a red leather bound book from a shelf and carried it back to the couch.

    “Come here. I want to show you something.”
    Deanna slid over next to her. “That’s your book. I saw it when I was here.”
    Tallah shot her a look. “Do you know what this is? This is my life as a vampire.” She opened the cover. Inside were hundreds and hundreds of photographs, each carefully pasted onto a page with a handwritten note beside it.
    “This was Lucas,” she pointed to a small, grainy snapshot of a young man about Deanna’s age with long black hair and dark eyes. He didn’t look tall but he looked proud in his denim vest and jeans. “This is almost as far back as I can remember now. I was perhaps fifteen or sixteen and still mortal then.”
    “Wait, what about when you were a kid? What about your parents?”
    “That was too long ago. I have some kind of memory, mostly voices. You start to lose that as the centuries pass. That why we keep all of this,” she motioned around her. “To remember who we were.”
    “Lucas and I were living on the streets of the New Quarter. I’d beg change for food. He’d already gone over. Sometimes we’d go our own ways but we always came back to each other.” She traced the image with her fingertips. “He’s dead now. I thought that he would always be there for me to go back to.”
    She turned more pages. “Silky, dead. Jonah, don’t know where he is. That’s Screener, that’s Grumpy… Tapper, he’s gone too…”
    Another page revealed a hand-sketched portrait of a severe-looking older man with short white hair. “That’s the vampire who turned me.” There was a look of bitterness on her face that made Deanna look away. “He took me from the streets, made me into what he wanted me to be. I was so ignorant. I didn’t know enough to hate him.”
    A few more pages turned. A lock of shiny, blue-black hair was coiled next to a photograph of a man with a flat, Asian face and almond shaped eyes. He was dressed much as Tallah did now and was holding the same swords that she used. There were streaks of gray running down both sides of his face. “John took me away before I could completely turn. I don’t think he intended it that way; he was hunting my Master. He didn’t know what to do with me. He taught me to hunt, to fight, and to kill. We used to hunt together. I stayed with him until his mortal body wore out, he got too slow…”
    “You see in time all the people that you love start to pass away from you. Soon you can’t remember their names or who they were, then you’re really alone.”
    Deanna helped her to turn the next few pages. “You had a lot of friends.”
    “We mark our lives by those people who love us.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “I had a very hard time, was a half-breed, outcast. I was stuck between too worlds, had seen enough to understand that I didn’t want to be a vampire anymore, but I couldn’t go back. I had always been taken care of; I couldn’t feed myself or find safe places to go to ground. I wandered onto the lands of The Durslain. I was sick and desperate. He found me, offered to take me into the tribe or put me out of my misery.”
    Deanna looked down at a picture of a young man with long hair. He was leaning back against a wall, looking at the camera with an air of amused indulgence as lightning streaked across the sky behind him.
    “Durslain, He Who Comes With the Storm. There are very old, very dangerous things out there. You just see the ones who come to light. I lived with him for a hundred years, maybe more, never walking out into the night. He taught me what I was, taught how to live. Come over here.”
    Deanna followed her over to an old trunk. Tallah popped it open and pulled out several bundles wrapped in rotting red silk for her inspection. She opened one to reveal a heavy gold necklace covered in round cut emeralds and huge black pearls.
    Deanna gasped as the light from nearby candles danced across it. “Wow!”
    “Wait,” said Tallah. “I have more.” She pulled out piles of rings, a diamond-encrusted belt, bracelets of every material, earrings, a headdress, and finally a golden collar and cuffs. “You see, as beautiful as these things are they all come with a price. You can live out eternity on earth in this kind of luxury but you must sell your soul to do it. Mortals don’t understand what they are giving up until it is too late to go back.”
    She placed the necklace around the girl’s throat.
    “It’s heavy.”
    Tallah slipped her fingers through the space between the metal and the skin and pulled it tight, choking her for a moment. “It gets worse,” she whispered up close to her ear. “It keeps getting heavier until all you can think about is getting free, but by then you’ve given away so much that there’s no more freedom for you. No matter how hard you try you can never take this off.”
    Deanna nodded, the precious metal pressing tight against her voice box.
    Tallah let go and pulled one more box out of the chest. Inside was a small device with a speaker and several palm-sized metal discs. Tallah fit one of the discs into the device and music started pouring out.
    “What’s that?” asked Deanna. She had never seen anything like it.
    “This is what they used to play music on.” Tallah showed her the discs. “You stored music on these. That was before everything went to hardwire.”
    The music that played was faded and dim, but Deanna could tell that it was someone playing the guitar alone. “That’s beautiful.”
    “This man never read a note of music. He spent his whole life playing like this, said that he was channeling from God. I used to go see him in the New Quarter.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “Nothing,” Tallah shook her head. “He was mortal. He played, he grew old, he died. Do you know what you are listening to?”
    “A guitar?”
    “His soul. You are listening to the sound of a mortal soul. It’s what every vampire gives up.”
    They were silent for a while.
    “What about you? You’re only half.”
    Tallah turned off the music and placed everything back into the chest. “I don’t know. I…” She turned away. In the silence that followed Deanna was almost sad that she had asked. Tallah was quiet for the rest of the day.




 

The wind was blowing cold and lonely as Tallah climbed up to her lookout point. From here she could survey territory all around her lair, see if anyone was approaching, think about things unencumbered by the clutter inside. She felt a terrible emptiness inside, not physical hunger but a longing, a wanting. She had begun to think very hard about her self-imposed isolation. All of the people she loved who could not keep up with her. All those who had grown old, faded away from her. She could return to the New Quarter, make friends there. But more and more the world began to drift past her in signs and shapes she did not recognize. She found it harder and harder to hold onto life.
    Absorbed in her own thoughts she almost did not spot the bike cruising up the road. She stiffened at its approach, ready to drop down, lock the hatch and gather her weapons. But the sound that drifted up was familiar. She knew the engine and recognized the rider’s easy manner in the seat. Rebel.
    Climbing down the ladder she roused Deanna from her couch. “Get up. We’ve got company.”
    The girl followed timidly behind her, not knowing what to expect. Tallah swung wide the door to the garage and Rebel cruised in knowing he’d be welcome.
    “Hey!” he swung off the big bike.
    “Hey,” Deanna answered back, causing Tallah to turn in surprise. Seemed they were already acquainted.
    “What brings you out here?” Tallah knew it wasn’t trouble; Rebel’s manner was too easy. He pulled off his glasses and tucked them into the pocked of her jacket.
    “Can’t a guy drop in and see how you’re doin’?”
    Tallah eyed him suspiciously. This was a long way to ride for a friendly visit. He had that look in his eye.

    “How’s my town?”
    “Missing one teenaged girl. Your parents are pretty upset.”
    Deanna shuffled uncomfortably. “Yeah, well…”
    “They asked me to come bring you back Deanna.”
    “What if I don’t want to go back?”
    “Then it’s a long walk,” Tallah interjected. “You’re out as soon as the sun goes under tomorrow.”
    “You can’t do that!”
    Tallah turned and walked back towards the door. “I can do anything I want little girl.”

 

Tallah was restless for the remainder of the night. She felt irritable, her skin itched and she couldn’t get comfortable. She hadn’t fed since she left town. She could have fed on the girl but she didn’t want to open that door. Deanna would like it, maybe start looking for more. But there was something other than hunger, there was some deeper need that she couldn’t nail down. Feeding might have veiled it, but it wouldn’t be full.
    She filled the hours by working on her bike and repacking her gear. She took out her swords and practiced, slicing off a little bit of her hair in the process. The blades were razor sharp and would slice a leaf falling lightly from a tree. John had always braided his hair and grew down to his knees. Tallah’s was long but shaggy on top where strands had drifted astray. Towards sunrise she finally ran out of things to clean and fix, put her weapons down in resignation and headed back towards her chambers.
    The sound of voices drifted up towards her. Rebel and Deanna were talking in a familiar manner that made her feel left out. Then they became very quiet. Tallah decided to camp in the garage.

 

That night Rebel loaded Deanna up onto his bike and walked back to say a final farewell to Tallah. He knew this mood, knew the signs that she needed to get out, sever some ties. She might be gone for a few months or a few years. He wanted to make sure it was on good terms.
    “I’ll take the girl back home, make sure she stays there,” he spoke to her back. Tallah didn’t look up. This time he didn’t feel as if he’d see her again. “Watch your back.”
    Tallah watched him go over her shoulder as he walked off. There was regret there. She didn’t like regret.
    She locked down her lair for a long absence. Packed her book away where only those close to her could find it, kicked her bike into gear and headed out down the open road. She had a mind to see the New Quarter again. Her people wouldn’t be there anymore, most of them, but there would be people and she felt the need to be in a crowd.
    The long road settled her as she passed in the darkness. She had turned off the light and put away her glasses, letting her hypersensitive eyes pick out the way before her and relaxed. She would find a club, feed and go to ground surrounded by the living and the dead. Maybe pick up the trails of people she hadn’t seen in awhile. Maybe pick up the trail…
    Tallah jolted in the seat as the thought came to her. She had been long off the hunt, far too concerned with other business to seek him out. But the thought was always in the back of her mind. Somewhere he was still out there. Amado Aleron, the vampire who created her and forsaken her. The bike wobbled alarmingly underneath her.
    Tallah pulled the bike over, her vision stinging and blurry. She was almost to the New Quarter. She had better get her mind back on the road.






 

The New Quarter was one of the few places where vampires and mortals lived side-by-side, freely and without constraint. The two races not only tolerated each other they enjoyed their quasi-forbidden existence. The city maintained a solid, businesslike existence during the day but woke once the sun went down. Most of the mortals slept until late afternoon and stayed awake through the night with their dark friends and neighbors. They intermingled freely, many of them lovers. Tallah felt safe and at ease here, almost at home.
    She pulled into the club district a few hours before dawn. She needed to find a place to go to ground and then feed. Both would be easy, she could feed in one of the countless backrooms and then take a darkened room in a hotel to sleep the day away. She would start looking for people after the sun set again.
    Not wanting to get caught without a room she pulled up at her favorite hotel and went in to the desk. She liked the narrow streets with the many balconies and close quarters. She needed the sounds of many people around her now and she could hear music and laughter. The rooms were small but rich, with four-poster beds and heavy wooden furniture. A little luxury would be a welcome change to her normally Spartan existence.
    She rapped on the desk. An old man with a threadbare silk hat limped up to the board. “Hello, Burton. Remember me?”
    The man tilted his head and looked closely at her. “Auntie Tallah?”
    “Hi, Burt. How are you?” She reached out and patted his shoulder with a gentle hand.
    “Why Tallah, you been gone so long I didn’t think you was comin’ back!” His smile of welcome was genuine. They had been friends since he had been a small boy. His grandparents had owned the hotel then and Tallah had lived there for years at a time, watching over the boy and helping to raise him. He was the grandfather now.
    “I’ll always come back to see you, Burt. You have a room for me?”
    “Your old room’s available. I’ll have Macey turn down the bed and draw the shades for you.”
    “Thanks. I’m going downtown for a few hours.”
    Tallah stepped out of the door and nearly collided with a young man in a denim jacket. Her reflexes snapped her back inside before he could touch her, but she caught a glimpse of his young face. She wasn’t used to crowded streets anymore, closed spaces where one would have to shoulder past strangers. Still, there was something…
    “Burton, do you know that boy?”
    “Not well enough to speak with, Tallah. I do see him on the street nearly every day for a while now. Did he bother you?”
    “No, it’s alright Burt. I’m going to need a little time to get used to being in the city, that’s all.” She was tired and hungry, and it was getting hard to stay focused. She’d better eat soon.
    She stowed her bike in the hotel garage and walked a few blocks to her favorite club. The man at the door didn’t know her but she still had her key and was admitted without trouble. Members came and went without question. Two hours after sunset this place was a steaming press of people, music and noise. Only the regulars held out this late, stretching their legs long after the young crowd had cleared the tables while they listened to jazz. That was a music Tallah liked, very smooth and dark. She inhaled the scent of old leather and stale cigarettes. This place smelled like home.
    She showed her key and her money at the door to the back room. Most of the girls had gone home, all of the boys were gone. As Tallah surveyed her slender prospects for an evening meal young girl in a white satin dress walked in behind her. The attendant put out his hand and stopped her at the door, “No amateurs. Back outside.”
    Tallah turned and looked at her. She was a little plump with a southern pout, her dark hair done up in a bun at the back of her neck and a black velvet choker. In some clubs a girl could walk into the backroom off the street and walk out minus a pint of blood and with enough money to pay the rent for a week. A club like this only allowed young men and women who were “approved” into the feeding room. It made the customers more comfortable.
    “Stanley brought me,” she refused to budge. “He said I could come back here if I wanted to.”
    Tallah walked closer. The girl smelled sweet, like flower blossoms and bathing powder. She didn’t smell like drugs or alcohol or even of perspiration. “Let me see your arms.”
    The girl held out her hands and Tallah rolled off her gloves, looking closely at her skin. “What’s your name?”
    “Marie,” the girl stuck out her chin. “And I don’t do none of that stuff you’re looking for.”
    “Have you ever done this before Marie?” Tallah found the girl appealing.
    “No, well, yeah. I mean, I’ve been bit. But I’ve never been back here.”
    Tallah nodded to the attendant and led the girl towards a screened off area with a plush velvet lounge. “Come sit over here, Marie.”

    The attendant brought an antiseptic swab and a washcloth. “On the arm, please. And bring us a towel. I don’t want to stain this dress.”
    The girl offered up her arm and Tallah bit in gently, just deep enough to make it flow. She had time and she didn’t want to hurt her any more than she had to. The girl hung on to the back of Tallah’s jacket, her eyes squeezed tight. Tallah relaxed and almost dozed as she finally felt her hunger ease. She was tired, and it had been a long time since she had fed. The girl put her head on her shoulder and stroked the back of the half-vampires hair. Tallah felt the slightest sting at the base of her neck.
    “Oh, you!” she roared as she sprang up. The girl pulled back, blood spilling down over white dress, trying to crawl backwards on the long seat.
    “No, no! No, no!” She held her hands up in front of her, trying to ward off the snarling visage of rage and blood in front of her.
    Tallah’s eyesight went red, her hands flashed out in front of her and there was a cracking sound. The girl jerked once and fell to the carpet in a heap.
    The feeding room erupted with screams. The remaining girls were trying to claw their way out of the door while the bouncers were shoving their way in. Silver-edged swords flashed out and blood spattered the walls, Tallah was forcing her exit. She knew the front entrance, back exit and all the fire escapes would be blocked. Whoever had paid that girl to shove a hypodermic needle into her while she was feeding would be waiting for her. But she knew this club, she knew every way into it and out if it and every way they had of smuggling contraband through it.
    She pushed several people down into tables. There were people coming after her but she was already in no shape to fight. Whatever the dead girl had doped her with was taking effect, slowing her down. She ran up the hallway towards the manager’s office, stopped halfway and leaped up hard, smashing through a dirty ventilation grid. This led up into an air conditioning system that hadn’t run in over sixty years, but the ducts led up into the building and would get her onto the roof.
    Tallah kicked free the roof cover and climbed out into the early pre-dawn. Soon the sun would be up and she couldn’t count on her pursuers being vampires. Behind her someone was hammering hard at the locked stairwell door. Tallah knew she had to get down and out of sight or she was dead. She scanned the rooftops. They hadn’t anticipated her going up; they thought they would have her by now. The buildings in this part of the city were packed close together. Tallah made a beeline for the next building, a little shorter than this one and started to run. Normally she could have hopped across without even thinking about it. Now she was running in slow motion, her feet dragging on the tarpaper. She reached the edge, made her jump, and stumbled...





 

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