Death of an Immortal by Duncan McGeary

bet anything it was him. I still think it might have been.”
    Bend was a nearby town, apparently. Horsham had a strange inkling that there was a connection there.
    The mighty Terrill, terror of Europe for centuries, vicious and remorseless, had stopped killing many years before. He’d disappeared.
    Why? What had changed? Horsham remembered how Michael had been at the end, seeming almost regretful. But most of all, he remembered how he himself had once begun to question the killing of humans. How Mary had changed him, until…
    Horsham was aware of the irony. Once, Terrill had been a vampire’s vampire, and it was Horsham who had had doubts, who had had regrets. Once, it was Terrill who had killed indiscriminately and cared for no one and nothing, and Horsham who had looked for villains, who had cared for the innocent and the weak.
    With one act, Terrill had changed Horsham forever. Without Mary, Horsham had lost all interest in humans, except as food. It was perhaps ironic that Terrill had changed, that they both had changed––but it didn’t matter. Terrill must die. Nobody, human or vampire, would stand in the way of that end.
     
    #
     
    So now, unexpectedly, it seemed that Terrill had fed on––and killed––a human again. If it was true that Terrill had somehow grown a conscience, what would he do next?
    Horsham remembered his own response when the human he loved was murdered. Suddenly, he was certain what Terrill would do and where he would go.
    “The girl was from Bend?” he asked.
    “Newly arrived in the big city. A lamb to the slaughter.”
    “Let me buy you dinner, detective. You can tell me what you know.”
    Brosterhouse sat behind his desk like a statue, massive, ponderous. He nodded once. “It couldn’t hurt. This is about as cold a case as it could be.”
    The policeman took him to a steak house, where Horsham picked at an overcooked hamburger while Brosterhouse gave him all the information they had. Which wasn’t much. Which wasn’t really anything at all. Except for one detail.
    “She was untouched, except for the puncture wounds?” he asked.
    “Yeah, it was weird. Someone laid her out and wrapped her up like he gave a damn. Drained her of blood and then treated her gently. Sickos, weirdos, creeps. There are all kinds, all kinds.”
    The detective didn’t have much more information than that. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t the real reason Horsham had enticed him out of the police station. Horsham didn’t leave witnesses. Where he went was nobody’s business––especially not a cop who seemed a little too curious.
    They headed back to Brosterhouse’s car, and as they passed an alley, Horsham grabbed the huge detective and threw him into the filth and darkness of the alley as if he was a little child. The cop was fluorescent to Horsham’s eyes. He saw the big man trying to see in the darkness, drawing his gun quicker than Horsham expected, firing a shot and getting lucky, hitting him right between the eyes.
    Horsham stumbled away, running farther into the alley. He could survive almost any wound as long as he fed quickly, but a shot to the head was enough to weaken him, and he ran rather than continue the fight. He’d come back when it was all over.
    A couple more bullets came his way, but both missed him.
    At the end of the alley, Horsham found a homeless man leaning against the brick wall of one of the buildings and drank his blood in seconds. Then he kept going, not stopping to feed further. Staying in darkness, using every instinct developed over centuries of hunting, he made his way back to his motel room without anyone seeing his blood-splattered clothing and smeared face. He fell into bed, still weak. The bullet had fallen out during the nightmarish journey, but the wound to his head still made him dizzy. He’d need a few hours to recover.
    After that, he’d get out of town. The detective would be looking for him. The whole Portland police department would be looking for